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ON HYACINTH HILL 


BOOKS BY MARY F. LEONARD. 


ON HYACINTH HILL. A Story. Illustrated by 
Charles Copeland. 262 pp. Cloth. Price ^i.oo. 

THE PLEASANT STREET PARTNERSHIP. A 

Story. Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. 269 pp. 
Cloth. Price ;^i.oo. 

MR. PAT’S LITTLE GIRL. A Story of the 
Arden Foresters. Illustrated by Chase Emerson. 
322 pp. Cloth. Price ^1.50. 

THE SPECTACLE MAN. A Story of the Miss- 
ing Bridge. Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. 
266 pp. Cloth. Price J^i.oo. 




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“THEY SAT SIDE BY SIDE ON THE STONE BENCH 


n 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


A STORY 


BY 

MARY F. LEONARD 


ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
CHARLES COPELAND 



W. A. WILDE COMPANY 


BOSTON 


CHICAGO 


LIBnawV OOMQRESS 
TVw> Arintes RenMved 

SEP 19 1904 

^OoowteMEWnf 
OLASB dt, XXo. Na 
' COPY B 


Copyright, igo4, 

By W. a. Wilde Company. 

All rights reserved. 


On Hyacinth Hill. 






\ . 


\ 


®a |Hg J#otf)er 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER page 


I. 

A Pair of Explorers 

. 



. 

II 

II. 

Miss Unadilla . 





20 

III. 

Elizabeth . 





31 

IV. 

At the Sewing Society 





41 

V. 

Strangers . 





48 

VI. 

The Lady of the Manor 





60 

VII. 

Old Friends 





73 

VIII. 

Louis .... 





81 

IX. 

Some Fair City . 





88 

X. 

Chiefly Talk 





95 

XL 

Betsy speaks her Mind 





105 

XII. 

A Friendly Compact 





114 

XIII. 

The Magic Trunk 





124 

XIV. 

Holly Wreaths . 





137 

XV. 

In Holiday Time 





150 

XVI. 

Louis’s Secret 





159 

XVII. 

A Question of Time . 





167 

XVIII. 

The Lecturer 





178 

XIX. 

A Bit of Success 




. 

187 

XX. 

The Gray Friar again 



. 

. 

196 


7 


8 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

XXL 

A Rumor Confirmed . 



PAGE 

. 205 

XXII. 

An Awkward Situation 



. 215 

XXIII. 

Among Old Letters . 



. 224 

XXIV. 

An Accident 



• 233 

XXV. 

Afterward .... 



• 243 

XXVI. 

Paths that Cross 

. 


. 254 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

“ They sat side by side on the stone bench ” 

Frontispiece 

“ ‘ There are more where these came from ’ ” 

“ ‘ Why, Elizabeth, you aren’t crying ? ’ ” . 

“ Louis waved aloft a small piece of paper ” 


PAGE 

U' 

17 

52 V 
I2I 

190 U 


9 


s 


On Hyacinth Hill 

¥ 

CHAPTER FIRST 

A PAIR OF EXPLORERS 

E lizabeth sat on the stile, her elbows on 
her knees, her chin in her hands. Her 
brown hair, parted and rolled smoothly back, fell 
in a braid over each shoulder. Her cheeks were 
flushed with the walk uphill in the September 
sunshine, the eyes that rested upon her compan- 
ion were blue and merry. There was something 
deliciously feminine about Elizabeth. 

“ Do you think you are going to like it, 
Billy ? ” she asked. 

“ It might be worse,” William replied, survey- 
ing the country from the middle of the road. 
“ It is a funny place, though.” 

He was fairer than his sister, and a year or 
two older, but the resemblance between them 
was strong. 


II 


12 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ I think Miss Unadilla is a dear, and Cousin 
Charles isn’t so bad, if he wouldn’t look at you 
out of his eyes in such a queer way.” Elizabeth 
leaned over and broke off a piece of golden-rod 
that grew in the fence corner. 

“ I suppose he has to look out of his eyes. I 
wonder where this path leads ? ” William peered 
over the stile into a meadow dotted here and 
there with apple trees and traversed diagonally 
by a narrow foot-path. 

“ It is much better than boarding school, for 
then we couldn’t have been together. — I wonder 
where it does go ? Let’s try it.” Elizabeth 
stood up, swinging her hat by its elastic. “ I 
love paths; they remind me of the Gray Friar,” 
she added. 

“The idea of your calling him the Gray Friar 
to his face, yesterday ! ” 

“But, Billy, I didn’t mean to.” Elizabeth 
laughed at the recollection. “ I don’t know his 
name, and really he didn’t mind it. At first I 
thought he did, he looked so solemn; but after 
I explained about that day at the Springs, when, 
just as I was wishing we could meet some inter- 
esting person like a knight or a gray friar, he 


A PAIR OF EXPLORERS 


13 


came out from the trees in a gray suit, he said 
it was all right, and quite natural I should have 
given him the name. I do think it is funny 
he should have forgotten to tell us his real name, 
after all.” 

“ It is queer we should have met him again 
so soon. Come on, Betsy ; let’s explore.” William 
made a flying leap from the top of the stile. 

Elizabeth followed more sedately. “You re- 
member that day we rowed him across the river, 
he hoped our paths would cross again,” she con- 
tinued. “Don’t you think that is rather a nice 
idea.? — that we each have a path of our own, 
and every now and then it crosses some other 
path. I wish you had heard what he said yes- 
terday. It was while you were talking to the 
conductor. I told him about our having to come 
here where we didn’t know anybody, and he 
said every one had to travel on an unknown path 
at times, but that it was not so bad if you 
made up your mind to it; for even if it didn’t 
seem very pleasant at first, you never knew what 
good thing was waiting for you around the next 
turn. That’s true, isn’t it, Billy .? It makes it 
interesting and like a story to think that some- 


14 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


thing lovely is perhaps going to happen very 
soon.” 

“ Something disagreeable is quite as likely to 
happen,” William retorted with pessimistic cold- 
ness. 

Elizabeth frowned thoughtfully. Yes, he said 
that, too. Travellers always have to put up with 
disagreeable things, but if they look for it they 
can usually find a little plant called happiness 
growing by the roadside.” 

“ He seems to have talked a good deal,” 
William remarked. 

“Yes, he did. Do you think he could be a 
minister ? ” 

“ He does not look like one.” 

“ I forgot to tell you,” Elizabeth went on, 
“ about our making wishes on the mullein 
stalks. It was when the train stopped at the 
water tank and we were walking up and down. 
Some mullein was growing beside the track and 
I showed him how to bend the stalk and make 
a wish. We both wished our paths might cross 
again.” 

“ He must have thought you were a silly.” 

“No, he didn’t. He knew it was fun, and he 


A PAIR OF EXPLORERS 15 

promised to look out on his way back to Wash- 
ington to see if the stalks had turned up.” 

“ I should like to know who he is,” said 
William. 

“He is just the Gray Friar,” laughed Eliza- 
beth. 

By this time the path had brought them to a 
gate beyond which was a stretch of woodland. 

“ Shall we go in ? somebody must live here.” 
Elizabeth looked doubtfully at her brother. 

“ It can’t do any harm. If we see anybody, 
we can run,” William answered. 

Silence fell on them in the shadow of the 
trees. The path cleared of all undergrowth 
stretched straight ahead like the aisle of a 
church. On either side rose the slender tree 
trunks, their branches arching overhead, and 
through this leafy screen the light came with 
mysterious softness. 

“ Isn’t it beautiful ! ” Elizabeth whispered. 
“ It almost seems as if there were an organ 
somewhere playing softly.” 

A turn brought them unexpectedly to the 
edge of a well-kept lawn belonging to a time- 
stained, red brick house with white pillars and 


1 6 ON HYACINTH HILL 

green shutters. They drew back a little into 
the shadow. There were no signs of life about 
the place, the shutters on the side facing them 
were fast closed. 

Let’s go round to the front,” William said 
softly. 

Here they found the same quiet — every door 
and window closed and silent. Around the 
pillars, rose vines clung, and the afternoon sun- 
shine sifting through them made lace work on 
the stone flagging of the porch. The sweep of 
lawn was softly green and unbroken except by 
a sun-dial with a stone seat beside it. 

The house stood well within sight of the 
road, which a quarter of a mile or so beyond 
the stile made a turn to the left. On the 
other side of the lawn a carriage drive led 
down to it. 

“ I wonder if they are away, or if — ? ” Eliza- 
beth left her sentence unfinished. 

“ If what ” her brother asked. 

“ If they are dead,” she added in an awe- 
struck tone. 

They crossed the lawn to the sun-dial and 
examined it curiously. William read aloud the 


A PAIR OF EXPLORERS 


17 

motto carved upon it, “ Gather ye rosebuds as 
ye mayy 

Elizabeth took her seat on the stone bench 
and looked at the old house. All was still and 
peaceful, the air was sweet with the scent of 
hay fields and musical with bird notes, a 
squirrel frisked across the grass and was lost 
among the trees. 

“ Billy, doesn’t it make you think of the 
Sleeping Beauty ? ” she asked. 

“ Only there the hedge had grown for a 
hundred years, so you couldn’t see the palace. 
Don’t you remember ? ” 

“ Yes, but everything is asleep,” Elizabeth 
said. 

They sat side by side on the stone bench, so 
quietly it seemed as if the gentle spell of the 
past had fallen on them too. 

William traced hieroglyphics on the grass 
with the stick he carried; Elizabeth, her hands 
clasped in her lap, gazed dreamily into the dis- 
tance, thinking of all that had happened of 
late. 

How far away they seemed to be from the 
old familiar home life. She and Billy had 


1 8 ON HYACINTH HILL 

really gone out into the unknown, as her friend, 
the Gray Friar, expressed it. Would they ever 
see him again, she wondered. To happen upon 
him in the station at Washington yesterday had 
been like meeting an old friend, and he had 
spoken as if he might some day come to 
Friendship. 

With a start she awoke. Sunny hours were 
over for the day, the shadows were growing 
mysterious and fearful. 

“ Oh, Billy, let’s run ! ” Elizabeth sprang up full 
of unreasoning alarm. 

Her feeling was contagious. Across the lawn 
they flew, through the dimness of the wood, 
and over the meadow till the stile was reached, 
where they stopped for breath. 

“ I suppose you know what you are running 
for — I don’t,” William remarked. 

“ What are you running for yourself } ” Eliza- 
beth demanded. 

“For nothing; you started it.” 

“You are as bad as Adam, Billy. He blamed 
everything on Eve, and you blame everything 
on me. I don’t think Adam was very 
brave.” 


A PAIR OF EXPLORERS 


19 


“ Even so, Fd rather have been Adam,” said 
William. 

“I’d rather be anything almost — than make 
such a pun, if that is what you meant it for,” 
cried Elizabeth. 

They walked slowly down the road, feeling 
somewhat ashamed of their panic. 

“ I think I shall like Friendship,” Elizabeth 
said, as they approached a covered bridge that 
crossed a willow-bordered stream by an old gray 
mill. “Friendly Creek,” she repeated, stopping 
to look down into the flowing water. “ It is a 
pretty name, isn’t it, Billy.?” 


CHAPTER SECOND 

MISS UNADILLA 

D r. MILWARD’S house, severely square 
and painted an unpretentious drab, stood 
on high ground in the midst of fine shade trees, 
at the point where the village street merged 
into a turnpike road. It overlooked the creek 
and the old mill from a comfortable distance, 
and its position combined in more ways than 
one the advantages of town and country. 

Miss Unadilla stood at the door watching 
while the white-haired, keen-eyed minister 
walked slowly down the path, and pausing at 
the gate looked up and down the road. 

Dr. Milward was one of the landmarks of 
Friendship, which had been his home for more 
than thirty years, except for a brief interval 
spent abroad in seeking health for his wife. 
Upon her death he had returned to the village, 
built the house on the Mill Road, and settled 


20 


MISS UNADILLA 


21 


down to a lonely student life; but after a few 
years he had been prevailed upon to take charge 
once more of the small Episcopal church. He 
did not go back to the rectory, however, which 
hardly furnished accommodation for his books. 
For this and other reasons he preferred his own 
house. 

The small parish in Friendship seemed ab- 
surdly limited for a man of his attainments, 
but he had resisted all the efforts made to 
induce him to accept a city church, and had 
gone on living his quiet life, greatly loved and 
looked up to by the whole village. 

But Friendship’s belief in his sound judgment 
had received a blow of late when it became 
known that he proposed to take the children of 
his relative. Senator Sayre, into his family for 
the winter. Miss Unadilla herself was a little 
surprised at it, though she found no fault with 
the arrangement Standing there in the door she 
smiled to think how strangely things worked out 

She had looked forward to the winter with 
some dread, for Thomas McLean, her nephew, 
and her chief care for twenty-five years, had sud- 
denly at forty taken it into his head to marry. 


22 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Miss Una accepted it sensibly. Mainie Townsend 
was hardly Thomas’s social equal, and she shiv- 
ered when she thought of the invasion of com- 
monplace wedding gifts among the McLean 
heirlooms ; still it was Thomas’s house, and 
Mainie was his choice. 

One thing she determined upon. She would 
go to Martha Doane’s to board, leaving the 
young people to themselves. She could take her 
grandmother’s beaded chair and her few bits of 
silver over to Martha’s and be quite comfortable 
and happy, running in now and then for Sun- 
day dinner with Thomas and Mainie. 

She went all over the matter with Dr. Milward 
when he called, and he listened gravely, his gaze 
on the carpet. He was her first cousin, and 
they had known each other from childhood. 
When she paused he said, looking at her with a 
twinkle in his eye: “It sounds very well, Una- 
dilla, and I dislike to interfere with Martha’s 
business; but it strikes me there will be more 
room for you and your grandmother’s chair out 
on the Mill Road, and I’ll certainly be more 
comfortable if you will come. I haven’t been 
well taken care of since old Miranda died.” 


MISS UNADILLA 23 

Miss Unadilla was glad she had not spoken 
to Martha. ' ^ 

To-day she stood there watching, till the min- 
ister with deliberation unlatched the gate, latched 
it again, took a leisurely survey of the sky, then 
walked toward town. So soon as his back was 
fairly turned she hurried into the study, where 
she moved about picking up papers, putting 
books in orderly piles, giving caressing touches 
here and there with her dust cloth. 

Like most students Cousin Charles did not 
care to have his table interfered with, and it 
was to Miss Una’s credit that he never sus- 
pected those stealthy visits to his sanctum made 
daily with dust-pan and broom. 

Miss Unadilla liked the room. The dignity of 
its book-lined walls reflected itself in her con- 
sciousness. She felt wise through association 
with so much wisdom. She hoped to do a good 
deal of reading this winter and had ventured to 
ask the minister for suggestions. 

Read ? ” said Dr. Milward, “ why, read what 
you like. It is the only rule I know that 
amounts to anything.” 

Miss Unadilla heard him doubtfully. This 


24 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


sounded like heresy to one whose sense of duty 
had carried her triumphantly through Macaulay’s 
“ History of England ” and Motley’s “ Dutch Re- 
public.” 

“ He thinks I am too old to improve,” she 
said to herself, yet Mrs. Marvin, over eighty, 
was a member of the Chautauqua Circle. 

“Dear me, here’s Martha Doane! She has 
come to find out about the children.” Hastily 
stowing her duster in the hall closet. Miss Una- 
dilla went to the door to meet her visitor. 

“Why, Martha, I didn’t know you had come 
home,” she said. “Won’t you sit on the porch.? 
It is pleasant outside.” 

“ I got back yesterday, and I am on my way 
now to get Cinthy to come and help clean up. 
Passing, I thought I’d drop in a minute.” 

“I am glad you did,” Miss Una replied cor- 
dially, disappearing for a brief interval to return 
carrying a tray with a plate of sugar cakes and 
a glass of dandelion wine. 

“Well,” said Miss Martha, accepting the re- 
freshment with evident relish, “you were born 
lucky, Unadilla. When I heard Thomas was go- 
ing to get married, I thought your hard times 


MISS UNADILLA 


25 


had begun, and here you are fixed as snug as 
ever.” 

“ I am fortunate,” Miss Unadilla assented, 
seating herself in one of the broad-armed rock- 
ing chairs opposite her guest. 

The two women presented an interesting con- 
trast. Miss Una had all the gentle refinement 
the word “ lady ” ought to imply, and she carried 
her fifty-eight years with something of girlish 
grace. No one ever accused her of trying to 
be young, and those who knew her well never 
thought of her as old. 

Miss Martha’s face, by no means ill-featured, 
had lines of hardness. There was antagonism 
in her manner of speech, her way of sitting in 
her chair, of pulling off her gloves. She had 
had a hard life, with much work and little play, 
but it was true that her attitude seemed to in- 
vite misfortune. At present Miss Martha was 
taking boarders — not a lucrative occupation in 
Friendship. 

‘‘ I am sure it would have been little enough 
for Thomas to do to give you a home with 
him.” Miss Martha held up her glass and eyed 
the golden liquid sternly. 


26 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“I have nothing to complain of,” Miss Una- 
dilla replied with dignity, a faint pink showing 
in her cheeks. “ It was right for Thomas to 
marry if he wished to, and he and Mainie have 
been very kind in asking me to stay with 
them.” 

“ After you had made other plans, I dare 
say.” 

“ They were quite sincere, I think, but of 
course I realized it was best for them to be 
alone.” 

“I don’t care much for words myself, they 
are cheap,” Miss Martha declared. 

“They can be very dear, too. I rather think 
we all have among our treasures some mere words 
that mean everything to us.” Miss Una looked 
away toward Friendly Creek and the gray mill. 
Her face was full of sweetness. 

“ I am not sentimental,” Miss Martha an- 
nounced, draining her glass. “I know, if you 
don’t, that there is mighty little gratitude in the 
world. Here you have given the best of your 
life to making Thomas comfortable — ” 

“And I have been happy in doing it. When 
we are kind to people we have the pleasure of it 


MISS UNADILLA 


27 


then and there. If they forget or are unappre- 
ciative, it is their loss ; they can’t take away the 
good from us.” 

“ Dr. Milward might get you to write his ser- 
mons for him,” remarked Miss Martha, bluntly. 

Miss Unadilla laughed. Her sensitiveness was 
balanced by her sense of humor. She could bear 
to see herself in an amusing light. “I have a 
way of entering the pulpit, I know,” she said; 
“but I fear Cousin Charles does not realize 
his opportunities. Tell me about your visit, 
Martha.” 

It was plain that Miss Martha had not come 
to impart information, but rather to gain it. Her 
six weeks’ absence in a neighboring town was 
disposed of in a few words, her sharp eyes roved 
about the place meanwhile as if they expected 
something they did not find. All was as quiet 
as usual about the minister’s house this after- 
noon. 

“Well, where are the children.?” she asked at 
length, with her usual abruptness. 

“ I don’t know,” Miss Unadilla answered 
serenely. 

“ Didn’t they come .? ” 


28 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“Yes, they came yesterday.” 

“ Well, of all things ! I could hardly believe 
my ears when I heard Dr. Milward was going 
to take two children into his family. How did 
he come to think of it ” 

“ William and Elizabeth are the children of his 
cousin, William Sayre. Their older sister, who 
is just grown, is in delicate health, and her 
mother has taken her abroad. This left nobody 
to care for the younger ones, as their father has 
to be in Washington.” 

“ Why doesn’t he send them to school ? ” 
“There were reasons against that,” Miss Una 
explained. “William injured one of his eyes 
severely last spring and is not allowed to use it 
for a year; this, of course, necessitates special care 
for him, and Elizabeth does not wish to be sepa- 
rated from her brother. 

“ Mr. Sayre is anxious that they should have 
a simple home life, and he wrote to Cousin 
Charles for advice, thinking he might be able to 
recommend some one in Friendship who would 
take them. We could not think of anybody and, 
after talking it over, decided we would try it for 
the winter.” 


MISS UNADILLA 


29 


“I don’t envy you,” Miss Martha remarked. 

“ I am fond of children. I only hope they 
won’t be homesick,” said Miss Una. 

“I’d like to know where they are.” 

Miss Unadilla smiled. “I am not hiding them. 
They went for a walk. They will be home before 
long.” 

Miss Martha rose reluctantly. “Well, I must 
be going. I hope you’ll get on with them,” she 
said. “It is not so easy — managing other peo- 
ple’s children.” 

After her visitor had gone. Miss Una sat on 
the porch until down the road by the mill two 
figures appeared. 

“I hope they are going to like me,” she said 
to herself. 

She was just a little afraid of them. In some 
respects they were so sophisticated. “ Where 
have you been, my dears ? ” she asked, as the 
boy and girl came soberly up the walk. 

“ We went along the road by the mill and over 
the bridge till we came to a stile,” answered Eliza- 
beth, sitting on the edge of the porch. “ And we 
crossed the stile and followed a path until we 
came to a house, asleep.” 


30 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Miss Unadilla nodded. “Hyacinth Hill,” she 
said. 

“ What a pretty name, isn’t it, Billy ? Are they 
dead or gone away } ” 

“ Madam Gilderoy, who owned the place, died 
a year ago, and since then the house has been 
closed, although for that matter it was not often 
open during her life. She spent only a month 
or two out of the year there.” 

“ Isn’t there a story about it ” Elizabeth asked. 

“ I don’t know any. Hyacinth Hill is part of 
what was once a large manor. The original 
manor house was burned a great many years 
ago. The one you saw to-day was at that time 
the gardener’s cottage. Except a few acres 
around the house, most of the land has been sold. 
Madam Gilderoy was a peculiar woman and left 
a strange will, but I don’t think it is much of a 
story.” 

“ Won’t you tell us about it, anyway } ” Will- 
iam asked. 

“ Cousin Charles is coming, I must see about 
dinner,” Miss Una said, rising. 


CHAPTER THIRD 

ELIZABETH 

E lizabeth sat on the grass, her arms 
clasping her knees, and gazed up into 
the branches of the liriodendron. Billy called it 
a tulip tree, but Cousin Charles said liriodendron 
was its real name. She repeated the liquid 
syllables softly. 

From the kitchen came the cheerful clatter 
of Miss Unadilla’s egg-beater, almost the only 
sound to be heard except the drowsy, distant 
hum of the mill and the rumble of an occasional 
wagon across the covered bridge. Billy was 
busy in the study with Cousin Charles. Now 
and then their voices floated out to her from 
the open window. 

Judging from two days’ experience, life in 
this old town of Friendship would be some- 
thing quite different from anything she had 


31 


32 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


known. The village, with its winding streets, 
many of them mere grassy lanes, seemed a 
pleasant place. It wore a comfortable, home- 
like air, with its roomy houses and blooming 
gardens, but thus far in their explorations they 
had come upon nothing so interesting as Hya- 
cinth Hill. Elizabeth longed to go back to it 
once more. In the light of midday her alarm 
seemed supremely absurd. 

As for the people, so far they knew only 
Miss Unadilla and the minister. Miss Una was 
certainly kind, and this morning she presented 
an agreeable picture in her large white apron 
and a dusting-cap made of a blue-bordered 
handkerchief, while she superintended the work 
of Pearl, the rather stupid housemaid. 

In Friendship, servants were hard to get, and 
harder to keep, she explained to Elizabeth ; and 
with an inefficient maid and an infirm cook a 
good deal devolved upon the mistress. 

Never before had Elizabeth given such mat- 
ters a thought. Though not exactly a helpless 
child, she had been accustomed in her own home 
to depend on some one else to keep her things 
in order, — to put away her clothes, and wait 


ELIZABETH 


33 


upon her in various ways. To-day she had had 
her first lesson in housework. 

“Your father told me he wished you to have 
some domestic training,” Miss Una said when 
breakfast was over, “so I am going to let you 
keep your room in order except on thorough 
cleaning day.” 

Elizabeth followed Miss Una upstairs with 
doubtful enthusiasm. It looked so pleasant on 
the porch. This bedroom, with its white mat- 
ting and muslin curtains and plain, heavy furni- 
ture, was most unlike her own blue and white 
chamber at home, all frills and photographs, as 
Billy said. She did not yet feel at home in it. 
She had left it in a whirlwind of disorder, hav- 
ing overslept herself, and the situation looked 
discouraging. 

Miss Unadilla did not seem appalled, however, 
and her tone was cheerful as she showed Eliza- 
beth how to take the covers off the bed and 
make it up again, and then waited while she 
hung up her clothes in the closet, folded away 
yesterday’s ribbons in a box, and brought some- 
thing like order out of the confusion of articles 
on her dressing table. It took a good while. 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


34 

and when it was done she felt a little tired, but 
she viewed the result of her labors with some 
pride. Miss Una mildly suggested that if, after 
this, she would put things away as she was done 
with them, it would save trouble. 

I suppose the next thing will be cooking,” 
Elizabeth thought, settling herself comfortably 
with her back against the tree. “ I shall not 
mind that if she will let me make good 
things.” 

At any rate it was better than boarding school, 
or being left with Aunt Myrah, for either of 
these would have meant separation from Billy, 
and if it had not been for the injury to his eye 
one of these two things would have happened. 

The fear of being separated from her brother 
had hung over her for weeks after the decision 
that Juliet must be taken abroad had raised the 
question, “ What shall we do with the children } ” 
But since the day when Billy had first marched 
proudly away to a boys’ school, accident had 
more than once restored him to Elizabeth for 
a time. 

In those days she had been long in under- 
standing why Billy should want to go off after 


ELIZABETH 


35 


lunch to play with Tommy Wilson, when she 
could do anything Tommy could, and she bit- 
terly resented the reminder that she was a little 
girl with a stately name to live up to. She 
preferred to be called Betsy. 

Once Billy had come home with a swollen 
hand, about which he had little to say. Later 
it was discovered that the hand was broken, 
and then that the injury had been received 
while punishing Tommy for teasing a smaller 
boy. 

And now Elizabeth began to understand the 
difference between a girl and a boy. She could 
never have ignored a broken hand, or have re- 
frained from telling how it happened. Her 
brother was a hero. She glowed with pride 
and overwhelmed him with attentions. 

On this and similar occasions she learned that, 
when pain and anguish wring the masculine brow, 
a ministering angel is very acceptable, although 
in hours of ease the same angel is more than 
likely to be subjected to severe criticism. 

It was not to be denied that Billy had a ter- 
rible way of exposing her weaknesses, but it 
may have been she needed just such a ballast 


36 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


to keep her from soaring too high above the 
earth in clouds of sentiment. 

Elizabeth’s ardent soul must have some one to 
worship, and the objects of her adoration had been 
many. There was a beautiful young lady who for 
a time sat across the aisle in church, the sight of 
whose profile beneath a picture hat had soothed 
Betsy’s restlessness and made the sermon almost 
a pleasure. 

“ Pooh ! it is just because she likes to look at 
Miss Winston,” Billy had explained when Mrs. 
Sayre commended her daughter for trying to keep 
still. 

A season of infatuation for her teacher in mathe- 
matics had followed, when she went so far as to 
treasure up the stubs of pencils discarded by this 
divinity, enshrining them in her jewel-box. The 
discovery of this, and the scorn and laughter it 
brought upon her, had hurt deeply ; for consola- 
tion Elizabeth had turned to story books. 

Why did she tell Billy things when she knew she 
must suffer for it ? she often wondered. He had 
his softer moments when he, too, made confidences, 
but she never had the heart to use his against him. 

For all his teasing, they were very good friends. 


ELIZABETH 


37 


particularly now in these new and strange sur- 
roundings. 

The gray Persian cat, Cyrus by name, came 
across the grass, waving his plumy tail. A white 
spot on his nose gave him a peculiarly knowing 
expression, and he stepped daintily as one con- 
scious of his importance. 

Elizabeth received him with open arms. “ You 
make me think of the Gray Friar,” she said, 
smoothing his long fur. “ Perhaps he would not 
be complimented, but he ought to be if he knew 
how beautiful you are. I wonder who he is, and 
if I shall ever see him again.” 

“ Elizabeth, wouldn’t you like a sponge cake ” 
Miss Unadilla called from the porch. 

Elizabeth and Cyrus lost no time in joining her. 
“ I wondered what you were making,” Elizabeth 
said, taking a golden, crusty bite. 

Next time you may help if you like.” 

“ I’d just love to. And now. Miss Una, won’t 
you tell me about Hyacinth Hill .? How it got its 
name, and the will, and everything.” 

“There isn’t much to tell,” Miss Una said, tak- 
ing up her work-basket, for she liked to sew as she 
talked. 


38 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Elizabeth sat on her foot in one of the rocking 
chairs, in a comfortable manner not tolerated in 
Miss Una’s youth. 

The place originally belonged to the Hyacinth 
family,” the lady began ; “ but many years ago, 
back at the beginning of the nineteenth century, a 
Louise Hyacinth married a Gilderoy, and being an 
only child she brought the estate into the Gilderoy 
family. She was, I think, the great-grandmother 
of the present owner of Hyacinth Hill.” 

“I thought you said she was dead,” Elizabeth 
interposed. 

“ Madam Gilderoy is dead, but at her death the 
place went to her niece,” Miss Una explained. 
“ She was an eccentric old lady, — Madam Gilde- 
roy, I mean, — and so imposing in appearance you 
might have supposed she had the blood of a hun- 
dred earls in her veins, as the saying goes, when, 
in fact, she prided herself on her humble origin. 
Her father, she used to say, was just a plain car- 
penter. I always thought she did it to be con- 
trary, for her husband’s people made a great deal 
of family. 

“ When Mr. Louis Gilderoy died he left a very 
large estate which his will divided equally between 


ELIZABETH 39 

his wife and brother. This was Madam Gilde- 
roy’s own wish, for it left her free to do as she 
liked with her share. When the brother, John 
Gilderoy, died, many years later, his fortune was 
inherited by his son and daughter. It was sup- 
posed to be securely invested ; but two years ago, 
through the failure of a trust company and some 
rascality on the part of a man in whom Mr. Gilde- 
roy had placed the utmost confidence, it was swept 
away. 

“ Madam Gilderoy had always seemed fond of 
this niece and nephew, and it was supposed she 
would leave them something in her will, under the 
circumstances, but instead of this all of her large 
estate, except Hyacinth Hill and a few thousands, 
went to a man no one had ever heard of, though 
he proved to be a cousin, I believe. Hyacinth 
Hill was left to her niece and its equivalent in 
money to Louis, her nephew. 

“ There was some talk of breaking the will, and 
there are persons who believe a later will may yet 
be found, and that is all. You see it is not much 
of a story, my dear.” Miss Una looked up from 
her embroidery to smile at Elizabeth. 

“ I think it is very interesting, but I want to 


40 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


know about the niece who owns Hyacinth Hill 
now. Is she grown up and what is her name ? ” 

“ Yes, she has been grown for some years. 
Her name is Louise Hyacinth Gilderoy, and as a 
child she used to spend weeks at a time with her 
aunt on the hill. In those days she was called 
Hyacinth, and a bright, sweet little girl she was. 
Since then I hear she has been greatly admired 
and courted in society; but I haven’t seen her 
for a long time.” 

“ I should think she would want to live in that 
pretty old place,” said Elizabeth. 


CHAPTER FOURTH 

AT THE SEWING SOCIETY 

HE first meeting of the Presbyterian Sew- 



A ing Society after the summer vacation 
was held at Mrs. Parton’s, for the reason that 
the repairs on the chapel were not yet finished. 

Miss Martha Doane arrived early. “ Of 
course I’m the first,” she said. “ I’d be rich if 
I could have a dollar for every minute I’ve 
wasted waiting on other people. As my father 
used to say, I was born punctilious.” 

Mrs. Parton smiled gleefully behind a bolt of 
unbleached cotton. “You and I will have time 
to do some cutting out before the others come,” 
she said, depositing her burden on the table. 

The business in hand was the usual Christ- 
mas box for a distant mission, and Miss 
Martha’s brisk shears had a number of gar- 
ments ready by the time the president arrived 
and called the meeting to order. 


41 


42 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Miss Reed, the secretary, read a letter from 
the missionary giving a list of articles that 
would be particularly acceptable in her poverty- 
stricken field. 

“ Dolls and picture cards, when those people 
want for the necessities of life ! ” Mrs. Moles- 
worth exclaimed. 

“ Some people have mighty little common 
sense,” added Miss Martha. 

Several voices murmured assent to this. 

“ But dolls are so cheap — ” the secretary 
began. 

“ And, ladies,” spoke up Mrs. Barton, “ re- 
member this is a Christmas box. Who wants 
to be limited to the necessities of life at Christ- 
mas Surely, we must give the children a good 
time.” 

Mrs. Molesworth shook her head. ** I don’t 
think it is right when so many people need 
bread to waste money on dolls.” 

“ If you press that, we have none of us any 
right to more than we absolutely need, so long 
as anybody is hungry,” Mrs. Barton urged. 

The consciousness of her new seal coat had 
something to do with Mrs. Molesworth’s silence. 


AT THE SEWING SOCIETY 


43 


“ Yes,” said Mrs. Lawrence, “ it would seem 
better to deny ourselves something rather than 
spoil the pleasure of those poor little children.” 
She was waiting to have some work rolled up 
for her. She never stayed to the sewing meet- 
ings. 

Mrs. Lawrence had once undertaken to re- 
form the Sewing Society after a winter spent 
with her sister in a Northern city. She had 
returned full of new ideas, one of which was to 
limit all conversation at the meetings to the 
discussion of missionary topics, or some literary 
subject, if the ladies preferred, a fine to be im- 
posed for each transgression. 

The attempt was a distinct failure. The 
attendance fell off, and among those who still 
came there were some who openly broke the 
rule and ignored the fine. 

The consciousness of high ideals sustained 
Mrs. Lawrence in the hour of defeat, but she 
felt she could not countenance the return to idle 
talk over the gingham aprons and unbleached 
undergarments, so she carried her work home 
thereafter. She had it in mind to-day to ask 
the interest of the society in a certain course 


44 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


of lectures which she felt would greatly benefit 
Friendship, but reluctantly decided to wait for 
a more opportune time. 

“Well,” said Mrs. Parton, looking up with a 
twinkle in her eye as Mrs. Lawrence rustled 
away, “ what’s the news ? ” 

“ I don’t know as there is any,” replied Miss 
Martha. “ Have you seen the children up at 
Dr. Mil ward’s ? ” 

“ I rather think everybody has seen them. 
They have been all over the town,” remarked 
Mrs. Pierce, the minister’s wife. 

“ If I am not mistaken, Unadilla has her 
hands fuller than they have been for a long 
time. They certainly haven’t any extra man- 
ners, for one thing,” Miss Martha said. 

“ I am surprised to hear you say so. Belle 
and I were up there the other night, and I 
thought them extremely well behaved, and the 
girl is as pretty as a picture,” said Mrs. Parton. 

“ I am surprised at Dr. Milward for being 
willing to assume such a responsibility at his 
age. What does he know about raising chil- 
dren } ” Mrs. Molesworth asked the question 
severely. 


AT THE SEWING SOCIETY 


45 


“ Speaking of angels, there he is now, talk- 
ing to Dr. Pierce. I believe he is coming in.” 
Mrs. Parton went to the door to meet the 
minister, and was overheard saying : “ Come in, 
Dr. Milward. It is just the Sewing Society. 
A little Presbyterianism won’t hurt you.” 

Dr. Milward was a favorite in Friendship, 
and had as many friends outside his flock as 
within it. After delivering a message from 
Miss Una, he entered the sitting room and 
shook hands around the circle. 

We were talking about you. Doctor,” Mrs. 
Parton said, ** wondering how you dared to try 
the experiment of taking two children into your 
family.” 

Dr. Milward smiled. “The fact is,” he re- 
plied, with an air of being confidential, “ I felt 
I needed a shaking up. I was getting into a 
rut.” 

Mrs. Pierce remarked that she found ruts 
rather comfortable. 

“ Undoubtedly, but dangerous. Too many 
habits — even good ones — are to be deplored.” 

“ I am sorry to hear you say so, Dr. Mil- 
ward,” cried Mrs. Molesworth. . “ It has been 


46 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


the aim of my life to have my children form 
good habits.” 

“There are persons,” the minister continued, 
apparently not noticing the interruption, “ who 
are so attached to their own beds, for instance, 
they could hardly be happy in the Kingdom of 
Heaven without them.” 

“ I thought there wouldn’t be any night there,” 
Mrs. Molesworth observed in an undertone to Mrs. 
Pierce. 

“ Having my own way was becoming hahitary y 
as the Whittredges’ old Martin used to say,” Dr. 
Milward added. 

“ For my part I don’t have such an easy time 
I have to stir round trying to make it harder,” 
Miss Martha remarked. 

“Still we all get into ruts. I often tell the 
colonel we’d be a dreadful pair of old fogies if 
it were not for Belle and the boys,” Mrs. Parton 
put in gayly. 

It was after the minister, with his easy, digni- 
fied manner and handsome white head, had 
withdrawn that Mrs. Pierce remarked she had 
been told that Miss Gilderoy was coming to 
live at Hyacinth Hill. She wished to know if 


AT THE SEWING SOCIETY 47 

she would be an acquisition to Friendship 
society. 

Mrs. Pierce had not lived long in Friendship. 

“Of course she will be, if she comes. I have 
heard nothing of it,” Mrs. Parton replied. 

“ It was dreadful, her losing all her money the 
way she did. Still she had lived on Easy Street 
a long time.” Miss Martha bit off the end of 
her thread emphatically. 

“ I suppose you heard about her brother’s get- 
ting so badly hurt in some college game last 
spring. They say he may never walk again,” 
said Miss Reed. 

“ Is that so ^ Well, it always rains when it 
pours,” Miss Martha said, folding up her work. 


CHAPTER FIFTH 


STRANGERS 


HE stage or hack, as it was generally called 



X in Friendship, moved briskly up the street 
with one passenger. From windows and porches 
this was noted, also that the passenger was a lady, 
and a stranger. 

Was she a visitor.? This seemed unlikely, for 
Friendship always met its guests at the station. 
Perhaps she belonged to the new people who 
owned the shirt factory, and recently had built a 
showy house out near Red Hill. 

Interested eyes followed the stage until it 
turned into Mill Street. This settled one ques- 
tion. She did not belong to the new people. 
Miss Martha Doane brought her beans to the 
front window with the intention of hailing Luke 
Ramsey on his return, and thus satisfying her 
curiosity. 


48 


STRANGERS 


49 


Indifferent to the interest it was exciting, the 
stage swung on its way past Dr. Milward’s, where 
the street became a country road and brought to 
view the gray mill, and the willow-bordered stream 
with its wagon bridge. 

On the other side of the bridge the passenger 
paid her fare and dismissed the stage, saying she 
would walk the rest of the way. 

Luke Ramsey regarded the young lady with 
honest admiration, as he slowly extracted from 
his trousers pocket the change for the quarter she 
offered him. “A pretty day for walkin’. Air 
you goin’ fur ? ” he asked. 

“No,” was the unsatisfactory reply, and drop- 
ping the fifteen cents into a small silver purse, 
his passenger proceeded on foot up the sunny 
road which ascended gradually between hedge- 
bordered fields. 

Luke made a wide and leisurely turn, keeping 
his eyes on the lady meanwhile. “ She kin walk 
all right,” he commented. “ Can’t be goin’ to 
stay long, she didn’t have no baggage.” 

The September day was cool and clear, the air 
was full of the wine of life* Luke’s passenger 
stood still for a moment breathing deeply, then 


50 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


moved on again with the light step and erect 
bearing which had excited his admiration. 

“ How pleasant and peaceful, and how little 
changed,” she said to herself. 

“ I begin to feel like a child again. This is 
the very hill we used to run down, and let me 
see — somewhere there used to be a stile and 
a short cut to the house.” She paused and her 
eyes travelled along the hedge, somewhat rusty 
now after the summer heat. 

“Yes, there it is, and the oak tree.” She 
crossed the stile, but instead of following the 
path she made a tour of investigation among 
the apple trees, returning presently with her 
trophies. 

“By good rights I should feel weighed down 
by responsibility,” she said, seating herself on 
the stile and placing three apples in a rqw be- 
fore her. “But I am not, for I own an apple 
tree, and the apples look good. I feel in a 
holiday humor. I am again the little girl who 
used to play in this meadow years ago, undis- 
turbed by the cares of this world or the deceit- 
fulness of riches.” 

Pulling off her gloves she put her hands up 


STRANGERS 


51 


to her face, contemplating her apples. “ I will 
begin with this, it is the biggest,” she remarked 
aloud. 

In the act of carrying out the determination 
she was arrested by a voice at her elbow. She 
turned quickly to face a man standing on the 
other side of the stile, who, as he lifted his hat, 
held out to her a small, silver-linked purse. 

“Pardon me,” he repeated, “but I think this 
is yours.” 

A foolish trifle it looked in the hand of so 
dignified a personage. 

The apple gatherer acknowledged its owner- 
ship, uncomfortably conscious of the childish 
speech that must have been heard. Had he 
dropped from the skies, this stranger ? He was 
a tall, well-made man, with a somewhat grave 
face, and hair just tinged with gray. 

“ Thank you ; it would have inconvenienced 
me greatly to lose it,” she said. 

“ I am fortunate to have come upon it before 
a wagon crushed it,” he replied. 

Perhaps something of the sauciness of the 
child who once played in the meadow, was 
stirred in the breast of her successor by the 


52 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


gravity of this stranger. It inspired her to say 
as he turned away, “ Won’t you have an 
apple ? ” 

The man betrayed some embarrassment, amus- 
ing as it was unexpected in a person of his 
bearing. 

“ I have come by them honestly. The owner 

y 

permits me to gather all I want,” her lips were 
grave, but the eyes that met his were merry. 

Recovering himself the stranger smiled, there- 
by improving his countenance. “ Need. I say I 
had no such doubts ? 1 only feared to rob 

you.” 

“There are more where these came from, and 
you may regard it as a reward.” 

“ For my honesty ? ” He took an apple. 
“But you haven’t examined the purse.” 

The lady calmly opened the purse and emp- 
tied its contents on the stile. A railroad ticket, 
two bank notes folded very small, some silver, 
and Luke Ramsey’s three five-cent pieces. “ I 
do not miss anything,” she said. “The apple 
is yours.” 

The stranger leaned against the stile, the 
apple in his hand. “ Can you tell me,” he 



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STRANGERS 


53 


asked, the place called Hyacinth Hill is in 
this neighborhood ? It is many years since I 
was last in Friendship.” 

“ I, also, am a stranger, but unless my memory 
fails me this path across the field leads to the 
house.” 

“ May I ask if you know whether there is 
any probability of its being offered for sale ? ” 

^‘None whatever. I mean,” the lady cor- 
rected herself, “that I have heard nothing of 
any such intention on the part of the owner. 
Perhaps you know it is part of an old estate, 
and family pride, I fancy, will keep its present 
owner from parting with it.” 

“ Possessions sometimes have to be parted 
with in spite of treasured associations.” 

A sound of wheels broke in upon the country 
stillness. 

“True,” the lady said, rising as if to end the 
interview, and there was a touch of haughtiness 
in her manner. 

With grave courtesy the stranger lifted his 
hat and walked down the road toward Friend- 
ship, his eyes bent upon the ground. 

A moment later a phaeton drawn by a bay 


54 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


horse several sizes too large for it, came zigzag 
down the hill and stopped with a jerk opposite 
the stile. A lady of ample proportions and 
pleasant countenance looked out. 

“ Can that be Hyacinth .? ” she asked. 

“ It used to be,” the occupant of the stile 
replied, descending to the road. “This is Mrs. 
Parton, isn’t it ? ” 

“Used to be.^” the lady echoed, holding out 
a cordial hand. 

“It is years since I have been called Hya- 
cinth,” Miss Gilderoy explained. “The name 
has been put away with other childish things.” 

“ Who is that man ? ” Mrs. Parton nodded in 
the direction of the departing stranger. 

“ I don’t know. He picked up my purse in 
the road, and I gave him an apple; that is the 
extent of our acquaintance. Tell mej Mrs. Par- 
ton, how is Friendship ? Do you know I am 
thinking of coming here to live ? ” 

■“ There is a rumor to that effect floating about, 
but I did not believe it. It is too good to be true. 
Friendship is in need of a sensation. We haven’t 
had one since the quarrel over the Gilpin will. 
We used to sing : — 


STRANGERS 


55 


“ ‘ Behold ! how pleasant ’tis to see 
Brethren dwell in unity — ’ 

and glare at one another over our hymn-books ; 
but now we are too amiable to be interesting.” 

Hyacinth smiled. “You must be hungry for a 
sensation if you can make one out of my coming,” 
she said. 

“ My dear, you don’t know how we have 
thought of you — as royalty enthroned above us. 
We were proud to mention the fact that we 
had known you in your childhood.” 

“ Mrs. Parton, how absurd ! Well, Humpty 
Dumpty has had a great fall.” 

“ It is too bad. Hyacinth ; the colonel says you 
ought to have contested that will.” 

Miss Gilderoy shook her head. This was a 
matter she did not care to discuss. “ Except for 
my brother, I do not mind so much,” she said. A 
shadow fell over her face, however. “ I have this 
place, you know, and I am coming here to think 
and plan, and get Louis well if I can.” 

“You will have every opportunity for quiet 
thought,” Mrs. Parton laughed cheerily, flapping 
her reins as a signal to the horse to move on. “If 
there is anything the colonel or I can do for you. 


56 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


from law to batter pudding, let us know. We 
have our faults, but we are friendly here in 
Friendship. Good-bye. Having seen and talked 
with Miss Gilderoy, my importance is assured. 
I go to spread the news.” 

Miss Gilderoy took her way across the meadow, 
wondering if any anxieties lay hid beneath Mrs. 
Parton’s liveliness. This thought often occurred 
to her since she had learned to hide her own wor- 
ries beneath a smiling face. She was no longer 
the child Hyacinth, but Miss Gilderoy, who was 
now passing beyond the realm of the society re- 
porter once so eager to chronicle all her move- 
ments, about to bury herself alive, so certain of 
her friends declared. 

“ If so, I shall at least be buried beneath the 
trees and sky, and that is better than being for- 
gotten in the crowded city,” she had- said. 

She had been told she was headstrong and un- 
practical, that the only sensible thing would be to 
sell Hyacinth Hill ; and for a time she had been 
half persuaded, until, after a summer spent in a 
sanitarium with her brother, it had suddenly pre- 
sented itself to her thought as a home. What a 
luxury a home would be ! From this moment the 


STRANGERS 57 

determination to make the experiment of living 
there had taken form and grown. 

Since her childhood she had been in the habit 
of thinking for herself, her natural self-reliance had 
been fostered by circumstance, but she had never 
before felt the weight of responsibility so heavy 
upon her. To do the best thing for her brother 
was her paramount wish, yet it was such a ques- 
tion what would be best. 

The peace of the wood path fell upon her. In 
its soft, mysterious light she put aside her prob- 
lems again and breathed happily. On the edge 
of the lawn she paused, — the house stood open 
to the air and sun this morning, for she had sent 
word to the old negro servants who lived in 
a cabin on the place and acted as caretakers, 
that she would be there, — but no one was to be 
seen. 

She crossed to the stone seat by the sun-dial, 
and resting there looked around her. A simple 
old country house, yet better than she had imag- 
ined. Surely, in such surroundings, Louis would 
improve. She had been right to come, right to 
say it was not for sale. She felt the calm that 
comes with a sense of the past. Here had lived 


58 ON HYACINTH HILL 

and loved and worked and suffered men and 
women whose blood was in her veins, and some- 
thing told her it had been worth while. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by Uncle Ben, 
who came hurrying around the house, while his 
wife appeared on the doorstep. 

“ Howdy, Miss Hyacinth, howdy ! We alFs 
mighty glad to see you. You’s growed to be a 
young lady sence you was here las’ — you shorely 
has.” 

“ Yes, Uncle Ben, I was thinking as I crossed 
the meadow how I used to play there, and what a 
naughty girl I sometimes was.” 

“ Law, honey, you was jes’ mischeevous,” said 
Aunt Hilda, coming to meet her. “ I was watch- 
in’ fur you on de front poach.” 

“ I couldn’t resist walking up the hill this lovely 
day,” Hyacinth explained, as she entered the 
house, followed by the old couple, who were de- 
lighted to have some one to talk to, and were 
full of reminiscences of Ole Miss, as they called 
Madam Gilderoy. 

The place had been kept in good repair, and 
such conveniences added as were possible without 
lessening its antique appearance. Inside it had 


STRANGERS 


59 


an air of dignified comfort. There was much 
good old furniture, and some valuable china, too, 
behind the glass doors of the dining-room cup- 
board, but each article seemed to have been 
purchased for use and not because it was Chip- 
pendale or Lowestoft. 

As she went from room to room, Hyacinth felt 
her courage growing with every step. This 
house, standing almost unused for years, was 
meant to be a home for somebody. It had been 
in alien hands, now it had come back to a 
Louise Hyacinth, the great-granddaughter of the 
first of the name. Ought she not to make 
every sacrifice to keep it.^ 

The place breathed restfulness ; from the win- 
dows the views were of sunny fields and wood- 
land, with an occasional glimpse of the roofs 
and spires of Friendship. 

She discussed gardening with Uncle Ben, and 
the possibility of raising violets for sale, an idea 
suggested by the sight of some empty frames, 
and in imagination was already reaping large 
profits when Aunt Hilda summoned her to 
lunch. 


CHAPTER SIXTH 


THE LADY OF THE MANOR 

O N one of the stone piers of the bridge 
Elizabeth sat looking down into the 
smoothly flowing water. She was bareheaded, 
and the sunshine brought out sparkles of gold 
in her brown hair. The stranger coming down 
the road paused at sight of her. 

“ Good morning,” he said. 

At the sound of his voice Elizabeth turned, 
and then, springing to her feet, cried, “ I was 
just thinking about you.” She held out her hand 
with much cordiality. “The mullein must have 
turned up,” she added. 

“ It did, both stalks,” he said. “ I am glad 
you haven’t forgotten the Gray Friar. Is there 
room for two on the pier.?” 

“ Yes, indeed, and it is such a nice place. The 
mill isn’t running to-day, and the water makes 
such a lovely, ripply sound.” 


THE LADY OF THE MANOR 


6l 


“So you like Friendship?” the Gray Friar 
said, taking his seat beside her. 

“Yes, I like it, and so does Billy. We have 
been here two weeks, and Miss Unadilla says 
there is nothing we haven’t seen ; but then 
Friendship is not very large.” 

“ And what has pleased you most ? ” 

Elizabeth considered. “ I believe I like Hya- 
cinth Hill best. We have been there twice. If 
you came down the road, you may have noticed 
a stile, — that is where the path begins. Billy 
and I wondered where it led, and so we dis- 
covered the house. Such a nice, old-fashioned 
place, with a sun-dial.” 

“That reminds me,” said the Gray Friar, and 
taking an apple from his pocket he cut it in 
two, and offered half to his companion. 

Her eyes danced. “ Have you been robbing 
apple trees ? ” she demanded. 

“Not at all,” said the Gray Friar, gravely, 
eating his half. 

“ Billy says it is all fair to pick them off the 
ground, that there is something in the Bible 
about it. Cousin Charles said it did not apply 
to our case, but Miss Una said if they wanted 


62 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


their apples, they ought to gather them, and not 
leave them lying around to tempt people.” 

“I agree with Miss Una, but my apple was 
given to me, unless I am much mistaken, by the 
lady of the manor,” said the Gray Friar. 

“Really.^ What did she look like.?” Eliza- 
beth’s tone was eager. 

The Gray Friar gazed down into the sunny 
water. “ She looked — like a young lady,” he 
said. 

We were there only yesterday, and the house 
was closed as tight as ever.” Elizabeth was 
inclined to be incredulous. 

“But this is to-day,” the Gray Friar suggested. 

“ If it was she, I know her name, — Louise 
Hyacinth Gilderoy. Was she pretty .? ” 

“ I think she might be called so.” 

“What made you think she was the lady of 
the manor ? — That sounds like a story, doesn’t 
it ? ” 

“ I inferred it.” 

“ Had you never seen her before ? ” 

The Gray Friar smiled at his questioner. 
“ Yes,” he answered. 

“ Then perhaps you know her ? ” 


THE LADY OF THE MANOR 


63 


“No, I do not.” 

“ It was funny she should give you an apple 
if you don’t know her,” said Elizabeth, adding, 
“ I suppose you have heard about her losing 
her fortune, and how her aunt left all her money 
to some man nobody knows, when Hyacinth and 
her brother hadn’t anything. I think she might 
at least have divided it, don’t you .? ” 

“ It would seem so.” 

“ And since then Louis Gilderoy has been 
dreadfully hurt, so he cannot walk. I really 
think that man ought to give them the money.” 
Elizabeth spoke with emphasis. 

“ Possibly they would not accept it,” her com- 
panion said, sending a stone skimming down- 
stream. 

Elizabeth was surprised. “ Don’t you think 
they would ? ” 

Along the edge of the stream the willows 
bent softly in the breeze, as if to catch their 
own reflection in the clear water, where the 
blue sky and the great floating clouds repeated 
themselves. Swarms of yellow butterflies drifted 
here and there, bees were busy among the golden- 
rod by the roadside, and over all lay the warm 


64 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


sunshine. A silence fell on the occupants of the 
stone pier. The charm of the September day 
was upon them. 

Elizabeth was the first to speak. I am glad 
our paths crossed again,” she remarked. 

The Gray Friar met her glance with a smile. 
“ So am I,” he said. 

“ I remember what you told me about every- 
body’s having to travel on an unknown path, 
and about the little plant called happiness,” she 
continued. 

“ I must say you are a delightful person to 
preach to.” 

“ You are not a preacher really, are you ? ” 
she asked. 

“ A sort of one. I am not a clergyman, 
however.” 

“ I am afraid I don’t like sermons very much,” 
Elizabeth sighed over the confession. 

“ Then I have made a mistake in letting you 
know I was preaching.” 

She shook her head. “ I don’t call that 
preaching. It is pretending — making a story 
of things. It made me think of a railroad map, 
with roads going in every direction, and crossing 


THE LADY OF THE MANOR 65 

each other now and then, and everybody going 
somewhere.” 

The Gray Friar laughed a little. “ It is a 
very old idea,” he said, “ almost as old as man. 
When I was a little boy I was left alone in the 
world. My mother was dead, and I thought I 
should never be happy again. I was to be sent 
away to school among strangers, and I greatly 
dreaded it. It was then that a kind friend, who 
was, by the way, a minister, told me the story 
of an old hero who left his home and went out 
to seek something better, of whom it is written, 
‘ He went out not knowing whither he went, . . . 
for he looked for a city which hath foundations.’ 

“ I remember how he put his hand on my 
shoulder, and told me that for each one of us 
life held something peculiarly our own ; it might 
be some great gift or some simple happiness, 
but whatever it was, it would satisfy us when 
we found it. What concerned us most was not 
to miss it through indolence, or impatience, or 
lack of courage.” 

“ But how can you find it if you don’t know 
what you are looking for } ” Elizabeth asked, 
her eyes fixed earnestly upon her companion. 


66 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ You will know it when you find it, and the 
way to find it is to be worthy of it,” he an- 
swered. “ Our old hero went out seeking the 
best. That is what the city of foundations 
stands for.” 

Elizabeth leaned forward with her folded 
arms on her knees. “ I wonder if I shall find 
mine ? ” she said. Does it take long ? ” 

“ A lifetime often, but then there is always 
the happiness by the way.” 

“ It makes me think of Arthur and his 
knights. I suppose they found their city, didn’t 
they ? ” 

“ ‘ Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint 
As from beyond the limit of the world, 

Like the last echo born of a great cry. 

Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice 
Around a king returning from his wars.’ ” 

Quoted the Gray Friar. “ That was the last 
Sir Bedivere knew of the king, you remember.” 

“ ‘ Some fair city,’ ” Elizabeth repeated, look- 
ing far down the stream, a smile on her lips. 
“ You can almost see the spires shining in the 
distance,” she said. • 

“Yes, you often can, and it is a great help 
on the journey,” the Gray Friar replied. 


THE LADY OF THE MANOR 6/ 

As the factory whistle at the other end of 
town proclaimed noon, he rose. “ Is Dr. Mil- 
ward at home to-day ? ” he asked. 

“ No, he and Billy have gone to the city,” 
Elizabeth explained. 

“ Then I shall have to postpone my call till 
another time. I should like very much to see 
him again.” 

“ Who was that with you .? ” Miss Unadilla 
asked, when Elizabeth joined her on the porch 
after bidding the Gray Friar good-bye at the gate. 

Elizabeth laughed. “ I don’t know his name, 
but we call him the Gray Friar, Billy and I. 
We met him in the woods last summer, and 
showed him which road to take, and he talked 
to us. Then we met him again in the station 
at Washington, and he travelled part way with 
us, and now here he is again.” 

Miss Una looked doubtful. “I don’t think, 
my dear, that you ought to talk to a man you 
do not know.” 

“ He knows Cousin Charles, he said so, and 
he is coming to see him the next time he is in 
Friendship,” said Elizabeth. 

As she ate her lunch Elizabeth was thinking 


68 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


of the Gray Friar, wondering if he could have 
been mistaken about the lady of the manor. 
She thought of asking Miss Una to walk up to 
Hyacinth Hill with her that afternoon ; but Miss 
Martha Doane came in with her sewing, and 
put an end to this project. 

Elizabeth resented Miss Martha’s numerous 
questions and comments. What concern of that 
lady’s was it who made her dresses, how long 
her mother would be away, and what ailed 
Juliet ? She stood it for a while, then slipped 
away. She would go by herself to Hyacinth 
Hill, she decided. 

So it was that Miss Gilderoy, out again on 
a tour of investigation, suddenly encountered a 
little girl at the gate which opened from the 
wood path into the meadow. She carried her 
hat by its elastic, and her face grew rosy red 
as she stood still in evident embarrassment. 

I am afraid we startled each other. I was 
not expecting to see anybody in this quiet 
spot,” Miss Gilderoy said, with a smile. 

“ I didn’t know you were here. That is — 
the Gray Friar said you were, but I thought he 
might be mistaken — ” 


THE LADY OF THE MANOR 69 

“ So you came to find out ? Now that I am 
here, won’t you come in ? Are you a neigh- 
bor ? ” Miss Gilderoy, when she spoke in that 
winning manner and with a smile in her eyes, 
was hard to resist. 

The newcomer surrendered at once. “ I am 
Elizabeth Sayre,” she said, “ and I am staying 
with my cousin. Dr. Milward, just the other side 
of the mill.” 

The young lady nodded. “ I know,” she said, 
“and I suppose it is unnecessary to add that I 
am Miss Gilderoy.” 

They walked along the wood path side by 
side. Miss Gilderoy made polite inquiries for Dr. 
Milward, whom she remembered, and Elizabeth 
answered demurely, with frequent glances of 
admiration at her companion. 

“ Now tell me,” the young lady added, 
leading the way across the grass to the 
stone bench, “ who it was that said I was 
here ? ” 

Elizabeth’s eyes met hers with a merry light 
in them. “ I don’t know who he is. I call him 
the Gray Friar. He came by this morning 
while I was sitting on the bridge, and he said 


70 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


he had seen you, and that you had given him 
an apple. I had half.” 

“ Indeed ! ” Miss Gilderoy laughed a little. 
“ And he told you who I was ” 

“He said you were the lady of the manor, 
unless he was mistaken.” 

“Your Gray Friar seems to be a person of 
keen perceptions. There is something in the 
title that suits his gravity.” 

“ I like him because he is so strong and kind- 
looking,” Elizabeth said, and she went on to 
explain about her various encounters with the 
stranger. 

“And you are ignorant of the real name of 
this benevolent gentleman who goes about re- 
storing lost property and sharing his reward, 
who appears and disappears here and there all 
over the country 

“ Now you are making fun,” Elizabeth ex- 
claimed, half disapproving. “ Billy and I 
thought perhaps he was a minister, but he says 
he isn’t, although he sometimes preaches,” she 
added. 

“ He looks it.” Miss Gilderoy bent her eyes 
thoughtfully on the grass. She rather wondered 


THE LADY OF THE MANOR 71 

who this Stranger could be. As Elizabeth said, 
he was strong and kind-looking, and he had 
known all along who she was. Presently she 
asked Elizabeth if she would be in Friendship 
all winter. 

“Then I shall see you often, I hope,” she 
added, “for I expect to be here myself.” 

Elizabeth dimpled and flushed with pleasure. 
“ I am so glad you have come,” she spoke 
with ardor. “ It seems as if the princess had 
waked up. The day Billy and I first came up 
here it made us think of the enchanted palace 
and the Sleeping Beauty. Were you inside fast 
asleep, really ? ” she asked merrily. 

There was no mistaking the admiration in 
her eyes. Miss Gilderoy bent quickly and kissed 
her. 

“ Then it is settled that we are to be friends,” 
the young lady said when they parted later on 
at the meadow gate. “And I wish to know 
Billy, too.” 

“Yes, indeed,” Elizabeth responded joyously. 
“ I hope you’ll come very soon to stay.” 

“ Billy, you’ve no idea — she is lovely ! ” 


72 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“Who is?’' William asked, adjusting his tie 
before the mirror. 

“Why, I have just been telling you — Miss 
Gilderoy. She smiles at you with her eyes, and 
you wish you might hug her, and — well, she is 
no ordinary person, I can tell you,” Elizabeth 
ended rather lamely. 

“What did the Gray Friar have to say?” 

“ I don’t know. He said a good deal. It 
was he who told me she was here. The ‘lady 
of the manor,’ he called her.” 

“What did he come for?” 

“ He didn’t say.” 

“ Did you find out his name ? ” 

Elizabeth shook her head. 

“ Pshaw ! ” said William. 

“ I don’t care, you wouldn’t have asked him, 
either.” 


CHAPTER SEVENTH 


OLD FRIENDS 

“ X REMEMBER her so well as a little girl,” 

X said Miss Unadilla. “She was in my 
Sunday-school class for a while, and I saw her 
once afterward at the time of her father’s fu- 
neral. The Gilderoys are all buried in the grave- 
yard back of the church. She must have been 
about fifteen then. As an old friend of the 
family I went, and I can see her now, standing 
so slender and straight in her black dress, under 
the old willow tree, clasping her brother’s hand. 
I ventured to speak to her. I hardly expected 
her to know me, but she did. There was some- 
thing very sweet about Hyacinth.” 

“There is now,” said Elizabeth. Like Mrs. 
Parton, she was enjoying the distinction of hav- 
ing met and talked with Miss Gilderoy, and 
Miss Una’s interest was great enough to offset 
Billy’s indifference. 


73 


74 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ Do you know,” she added, “ I almost hate 
that man who got the money.” 

“ My dear, you mustn’t say that,” Miss Una- 
dilla protested. “ He couldn’t exactly help it.” 

Elizabeth carried her books into the study. 
There were certain lessons she recited with 
Billy to Dr. Milward, for others she went three 
times a week to Mrs. Graham’s school on Main 
Street, while Billy had a tutor from a neigh- 
boring town. 

The minister had his own peculiar methods, 
or what might have seemed to Mrs. Graham 
lack of method. Discussion was frequently the 
order of the day. He liked to talk, and found 
these intelligent children stimulating, and their 
independence of thought very amusing. If he 
sometimes allowed himself to be enticed from 
the main road into fascinating by-paths, these 
excursions were never quite fruitless ; and not 
being bound to cover given ground in a given 
time, no harm was done. 

As William could not use his eyes, it was 
Elizabeth’s favorite device to pretend he was 
the almost blind historian, Prescott, and she 
his amanuensis, searching encyclopaedias and 


OLD FRIENDS 


75 


dictionaries. The one objection her brother 
found to this was her habit of holding up for 
his imitation the great historian’s invariable 
cheerfulness. Billy sometimes wished he had 
never been heard of, for he spoiled the pure 
satisfaction of many a growl. 

What William had named the histo-geographo- 
literature lesson — for Dr. Milward liked to 
correlate his subjects — was drawing to its end 
this morning when Elizabeth suddenly inter- 
rupted. 

There she is, and she is coming in ! Cousin 
Charles, please excuse me, but mayn’t Billy 
peep ? It is Miss Gilderoy.” 

Miss Gilderoy it undoubtedly was, for Pearl 
entered presently with a card. The minister 
studied it deliberately. “ You may show her 
in,” he said, and dismissed the children. 

Elizabeth would have liked to linger, but 
William seized upon her with a suddenness she 
could not resist, and pulled her through one 
door as the visitor entered by the other. 

“ I hope you haven’t forgotten Hyacinth 
Gilderoy,” she said, advancing as the minister 
rose to meet her. 


76 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


He took her hand, thinking Betsy’s rhap- 
sodies not so unreasonable after all. “ So this 
is the little Hyacinth I used to know, who used 
to take long walks with me.? I am very glad 
to see her again.” 

He gave her a chair and took another beside 
her. “ I hear you are coming to Friendship to 
stay,” he said. 

Miss Gilderoy smiled. “Yesterday I was sure, 
this morning I have doubts again. That is why 
I am here, partly. I want some advice from 
an old friend.” 

Dr. Milward did not speak, but the expression 
of his dark eyes was kind as well as keen. He 
bent his white head to listen. 

“ All my friends at home are opposed to my 
coming here to live,” she continued, “ But I 
must live somewhere, and I think perhaps it 
would be good for Louis at Hyacinth Hill. He 
says we have practically nothing ; but I have the 
old place and he has a little money, so, looked at 
in another way, it seems to me we have practi- 
cally something.” 

“There are usually two ways of looking at a 
thing,” said Dr. Milward. “The disciple, you re- 


OLD FRIENDS 77 

member, thought the loaves and fishes practically 
nothing, and apologized for mentioning them.” 

Thank you,” Hyacinth said with a smile. 
“ If I stay in the city, I am afraid I shall grow 
narrow and envious. Here I can raise flowers 
and be friendly, as Mrs. Parton says.” 

“ Friendship is a good place to come to. I 
ought to know after thirty years’ experience. 
As for expense, I should say it costs about 
half as much to live here as in town.” 

“You don’t know how pleasant it is to find 
some old friends here who haven’t forgotten 
me, and who call me Hyacinth. It has given 
me already a home feeling.” After a minute’s 
silence she continued : “ It seems a little strange, 
doesn’t it. Dr. Milward, that all these changes 
should have come to me just when I had de- 
termined to live quite differently ? I mean I was 
tired of pleasure, and I meant to be useful. I 
had plans — there is so much one can do to help. 
I had come to feel ashamed that I had so much 
and was doing so little. And now I can’t do 
anything. It was like being told that I was 
not needed when I thought I was going to be 
so useful.” 


78 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


The minister smiled. “ I should say, Hyacinth, 
that the interpretation is, you are needed some- 
where else. God doesn’t make mistakes, though 
we sometimes give him the credit for our own. 
I am sorry, indeed, that so much trouble has 
come to you, but I see an unconquerable soul 
looking out of your eyes. I cannot quite under- 
stand your aunt’s will,” he added. 

“ It is of no use to think about it now,” 
Hyacinth said. I regret it more on Louis’s 
account than my own. Aunt Gilderoy had 
every right to leave her money as she saw fit. 
My uncle left half his estate to my father, you 
know. Louis is convinced that it was a case 
of undue influence on the part of this person 
to whom she left the money, but there was 
really little or no evidence.” 

“ I imagine not. Madam Gilderoy was not a 
woman to be easily influenced. She had her 
own ideas, and she kept secret the fact that 
she was educating this boy. I was one of the 
few who knew of it. I have heard little or 
nothing of him for ten years. Martin Whitney 
is his name, is it not ? ” 

“ I believe so.” Miss Gilderoy spoke as if 


OLD FRIENDS 


79 


the name could have no possible interest for 
her. “ Louis says he is quite an ordinary per- 
son. I had a singular communication from 
him, asking for an interview. He said I prob- 
ably knew there were matters upon which 
Madam Gilderoy had desired him to consult 
me.” There was something like disdain in 
Hyacinth’s voice. 

“ And you refused to see him ” 

“ Certainly. As I was leaving town for a 
day or two, and knew of no possible reason 
for an interview, I declined the honor.” 

“ Are you not a little unreasonable ? ” Dr. Mil- 
ward asked, smiling. 

“Am 1 ? Yes, I suppose it does make me 
rather rebellious when I think of Louis needing 
everything, and this man with probably a great 
deal more than he knows what to do with.” 

“ Wasn’t there something in the will about the 
way in which the money was to be used ? ” 

“ She hoped he would use it in carrying out 
certain plans which they had discussed together, 
I believe. He was not bound in any way.” 

Miss Unadilla with Elizabeth and Billy were 
on the porch when Miss Gilderoy came out fol- 


8o 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


lowed by the minister. Miss Una had her em- 
broidery, and though almost as eager as Eliza- 
beth to see the visitor, she wore her usual air of 
serenity. Elizabeth was reading aloud in a jerky 
manner, with frequent pauses to listen for the 
study door ; William, stretched comfortably on 
the settee, was calmly curious. 

His curiosity was lost in some other emotion, 
when, after claiming Miss Una as an old friend, and 
greeting Elizabeth with a smile of comradeship, 
she turned to him, with, “ This is Billy, I know.” 
From that moment he was her staunch admirer. 

Miss Gilderoy was going back to town that 
afternoon, to return probably in a week or two. 
“ I shall come back with the delightful feeling 
of already having friends here,” she said, adding 
a little wistfully, “ I know you will be good to my 
brother. He is very despondent, poor boy. I do 
so hope to be able to make life brighter for 
him.” 

Good to him } Of course they would be. He 
shared the radiance that fell upon everything 
connected with the lady of the manor. 


CHAPTER EIGHTH 


LOUIS 

“ T DON’T care what you do, but I think it is 
A all very foolish.” 

Hyacinth looked at her brother. “ Does that 
mean that whatever I do you will consider foolish } 
If so, it rather simplifies matters.” 

“ It is of no use for me to say anything. You 
have done as you chose all along; but as I tell 
you, I don’t care. What difference does it make 
to me where I am .? — a helpless log ! ” 

Hyacinth was silent. She was very gentle with 
Louis. Remembering him as he had been only 
a short time ago, so bright and engaging, so full 
of boyish devotion toward her, she could not do 
enough for him now. She had been blind to the 
selfishness that lay beneath his amiability, and 
a lavish generosity that really cost him nothing ; 
a selfishness that had risen to the surface since 
this double calamity had fallen on him, and that 

8i 


82 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


blinded him to everything but his own unhappi- 
ness. 

“ He ought to recover,” his physician had said 
to her that morning. “ He has youth and a good 
constitution in his favor, but he needs to be roused. 
His mental state is deplorable. Give him change ; 
interest him in something.” 

Easy to say, but how could she arouse him ? 
Perhaps Hyacinth Hill would be the very worst 
place for him. Yet she could not leave him any 
longer at the sanitarium, and what else offered.? 
She must make the venture. 

If her destination had been the heart of Africa, 
instead of a village fifty miles away, her friends 
could hardly have said good-bye with greater 
solemnity that bright October day. As she sat 
beside her brother’s chair in the baggage-car, 
which had been found to be the most comfort- 
able way of making the short journey. Hyacinth 
unfolded an afternoon paper, and read in the 
society column the announcement that Miss 
Gilderoy and her brother had left the city to 
make their home at the old family place. Hyacinth 
Hill, near Friendship. 

“And hereafter Miss Gilderoy will be lost to 


LOUIS 83 

sight,” she said gayly. “If I am to believe my 
friends, I am going into oblivion.” 

Louis looked at his sister. He admired her 
very much. He had always been proud of her 
when she came down to see him at college. For- 
getting himself for a moment, he wondered at 
her cheerfulness under these changed conditions. 

“You speak as if you did not mind it at all,” 
he remarked. 

“ Dear, I shall not, if only you will be half 
happy,” she replied. 

Louis was annoyed. Happy indeed! Let any 
one try it in his condition. It did not occur to 
him that he had never made any effort himself. 
He was convinced that nothing short of hopeless 
despondency was to be expected of him. 

At first the change did . undoubtedly brighten 
Louis a little. It was impossible not to feel 
the pleasantness of the old house, where with 
some degree of independence he could wheel 
himself about from room to room, where he 
could sit on the porch or be rolled around 
outside by Ranney, Uncle Ben’s grandson. 
Hyacinth began to hope that it might be the 
beginning of decided improvement. 


84 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Meeting William and Elizabeth on the road 
several days after their arrival, she ventured 
to ask them to come up to the house to see 
her brother. 

The children were greatly interested in him, 
particularly Elizabeth, whose tender heart had 
been deeply touched by the story of his injury. 
Suppose Billy had been hurt like that! They 
had even made plans for amusing Louis, and 
were eager to begin. 

The invalid’s chair was beside the sun-dial, 
where the warm sunshine made the crisp air 
a delight. On his knees lay a magazine, but 
he was not reading. 

“ Louis, I have brought some friends of mine 
to see you,” Hyacinth announced gayly. 

Louis turned his handsome, unhappy face 
toward his sister as she crossed the grass, fol- 
lowed by her companions. 

“You know very well I do not wish to see 
people,” he said. 

“ Louis hasn’t seen any one but doctors and 
invalids for so long he is not very sociable,” 
Hyacinth explained in a tone she might have 
used toward a naughty baby, adding, “ I want 


LOUIS 


85 


you to know Elizabeth and William Sayre, dear. 
They are at Dr. Milward’s this winter, almost 
our nearest neighbors.” 

Louis gave a curt nod in their direction, 
then deliberately opening his magazine became 
to all appearances absorbed in its pages. 

Elizabeth gazed at him in astonishment. 
Could this disagreeable person be Miss Hya- 
cinth’s brother ? She quite forgot to be sorry 
for him. She felt both indignant and embar- 
rassed. On the impulse of the moment she 
slipped her hand through Miss Gilderoy’s arm. 
Billy stooped to pat the collie who was offering 
them a more gentlemanly greeting. 

If Louis doesn’t want us, we will go to the 
house. You have never been inside, have 
you ? ” There was the faintest possible tremor 
in Hyacinth’s voice. 

They were only too happy to leave the gloomy 
figure by the sun-dial, and their hostess pres- 
ently recovered herself, and was as charming 
as Louis was cross. She led them about from 
room to room, pointing out some odd and in- 
teresting things, in particular some old blue 
platters and portrait pitchers behind the glass 


86 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


doors of the dining-room cupboard. She took 
down a tea-pot with a scroll border around the 
cover, on which were mottoes, such as ** Be in- 
dustrious,” “ Be virtuous.” “ Some day I shall 
ask you to take tea with me,” she said. 

Elizabeth was charmed with the house. ‘‘ I 
should like to live here myself,” she declared. 

I hope you will come often,” Miss Gilderoy 
said. “ And you must forgive poor Louis’s un- 
sociability. He does not like to see people, but 
I am so anxious to have him become accustomed 
to it.” 

“ Shall you go again .? ” Billy asked as they 
walked home. 

Elizabeth considered. ‘‘Yes, I think so. At 
first I thought I shouldn’t, but Miss Hyacinth 
seems to want us. He was horrid, but maybe 
he’ll be nicer another time.” 

“ He hasn’t the manners of a pig.” 

“ No, he hasn’t. But then it is dreadful not 
to be able to walk.” 

“He reminded me of one of those griffins 
on the doorstep of the Whittredge house. 
Don’t you know } ” 


LOUIS 87 

“We’ll call him the Griffin,” Elizabeth sug- 
gested. 

“ It is a clear case of Beauty and the Beast, 
isn’t it ? ” William added. 


CHAPTER NINTH 


SOME FAIR CITY 


HE first fire of the season crackled and 



X blazed on the study hearth. Before it, in 
a high-backed chair with broad, protecting ears, 
Elizabeth sat, her eyes on the flames, her 
thoughts far away. The only other light came 
from Dr. Milward’s shaded lamp across the 


room. 


Miss Una had gone to her nephew’s accom- 
panied by Billy, and Elizabeth feeling a little 
lonely had slipped softly in and stowed herself 
in the cavernous chair. Cyrus followed and lay 
stretched in lazy enjoyment at her feet. 

Perhaps it was a touch of homesickness that 
spoiled the interest of her story-book this even- 
ing. A letter lay in her lap — a letter full of 
motherly admonitions and caressing words that 
stirred a longing for the dear writer. 

“ I am glad you are learning to keep your 


88 


SOME FAIR CITY 


89 


room in order, dearest,” the letter said. “ I 
have no doubt you will have developed quite a 
domestic taste when I see you again. But re- 
member, Elizabeth, not to stoop or stride, and 
be sure your ribbons are always fresh. I wish 
I knew more about your surroundings. I feel 
as if I had neglected you in the haste to get 
Juliet away. I am only half satisfied to have 
you and Billy in that out-of-the-way place. I 
trust you are happy, darling. Don’t forget to 
read a verse every day from your little book.” 

How every word recalled her graceful, charm- 
ing mother ! How pleasant it would be to have 
them all — father, mother, and Juliet, with Billy 
and herself — here before the fire! Elizabeth 
felt a longing for the family life. Not that 
they had often been together at home. Her 
mother and sister were always going some- 
where; her father absorbed in his profession. 
She and Billy had been left to go their own 
way pretty much in the last year or two. 

Her mother would not like Friendship ; Eliza- 
beth was sure of that, but for herself she was 
glad her path lay through it. Her thoughts 
often went back to this favorite fancy, — the 


90 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


journey into the unknown country, and in the 
glowing fire as she watched it she discovered 
hills and valleys and winding roads, and the 
gleam of distant spires. 

“ What do you see, Elizabeth } ” The minis- 
ter crossed the room and bent to warm his 
hands at the blaze, conscious now for the first 
time of her presence. 

Suddenly recalled, she lifted dreamy eyes to 
his face. “ ‘ Some fair city,’ ” she said, using 
the words the Gray Friar had quoted. “ I was 
wondering when I should find mine.” 

Dr. Milward drew up a chair and sat down. 
There was a pleasant light in his eyes as he 
asked, What do you mean, my dear } ” 

So it happened there in the firelight that he 
heard all about the Gray Friar. He had indeed 
heard mention of this person before, but had 
given little heed; now he listened attentively. 

“ Cousin Charles, who was the hero who 
went out into the unknown, seeking a city.? 
Was it a Pilgrim Father.? Billy thought so.” 

Dr. Milward smiled. “ One of the first, I 
should say. Have you never heard of Abra- 
ham .? ” 


SOME FAIR CITY 


91 


“ Oh, is it in the Bible ? Why, of course I 
have ! ” Elizabeth exclaimed. “ The Gray Friar 
said it did not mean really a city,” she con- 
tinued, “but that that was just a — ” 

“ Symbol } ” suggested the minister. 

“Yes — a symbol for what he was seeking.” 

“ ‘ Wherefore God is not ashamed to be 
called their God, for He hath prepared for 
them a city,’ ” Dr. Mil ward repeated. 

“ I hope I shall not miss it,” Elizabeth said 
after a silence. 

“If you make the best of your journey each 
day, there is no fear of that. It is only those 
who sit still and refuse to seek, or climb, of 
whom God is ashamed ; for whom there will be 
no city.” 

Dr. Milward threw more wood on the fire, 
setting free a cloud of sparks. Cyrus lifted 
startled ears, then returned to slumber. His 
two companions watched the flames in silence. 
They both had the Gray Friar in mind, but the 
minister saw a small, freckled-faced boy who 
sat on a doorstep the picture of loneliness and 
despair. He felt again the cold, reluctant hand 
in his own as he led the child to a quiet place 


92 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


on the hillside and bade him look at the sky 
and be brave, for every one must face the un- 
known sometime. He saw the response to his 
appeal in the lifted head and the straightening 
of the sturdy shoulders, and the dawning in the 
pale face of the hope that knows no fear. 

This had been many years ago. The boy had 
grown to manhood in a Western university town, 
proving himself so far as was known worthy of 
the opportunity which had been given him. 
More than once of late it had occurred to 
the minister to wonder if the man would meet 
the new obligations which had so unexpectedly 
come to him, with the boy’s spirit. At least, if 
he and Betsy’s Gray Friar were the same, he 
had not forgotten the old story. 

“I should not fancy being in Martin’s place, 
with all that money,” he thought; then aloud he 
asked, “ Elizabeth, when did your friend, the Gray 
Friar as you call him, say he would be in town 
again ? ” 

“He didn’t say. Cousin Charles — only that 
he would come to see you next time.” 

And now their fireside musings were brought 
to an end by the entrance of Miss Unadilla 


SOME FAIR CITY 


93 


and William, fresh from the heart of town, 
supplied with many little items of village talk. 

Elizabeth gave her arm-chair to Miss Una 
and joined Cyrus on the rug. William drew up 
a foot-stool. 

“ Mrs. Parton came in while we were at 
Thomas’s,” began Miss Una, drawing off her 
gloves. 

“ Mrs. Parton is jolly good fun,” William 
observed. 

“ She is a very good woman,” said Miss Una, 
as if in defence. “Well, we were talking about 
the Gilderoys. Everybody likes Hyacinth, it 
seems. Even Martha Doane says she isn’t a 
bit stuck up; but as for Louis — ” 

“ Nobody has any use for him,” concluded 
Billy. 

“Mrs. Parton says he was positively rude to 
her, and spoke to his sister in a way that made 
her want to box his ears. She says she can 
stand a good deal from the colonel when he has 
gout, but if he behaved half as outrageously as 
Louis does, she’d leave the house.” 

“ It is partly Hyacinth’s fault,” Dr. Milward 
remarked. 


94 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ She is entirely too good to him,” said Eliza- 
beth, caressing the cat. 

** Poor boy, I wish there was something we 
could do for him.” Miss Una smoothed her 
gloves thoughtfully. 

Dr. Milward shook his head. He, too, had 
experienced Louis’s rudeness. There must be, 
of course, some good in the boy, some remnants 
of right feeling, if one knew how to reach them.” 

As they went upstairs to bed Elizabeth said, 
“ Billy, I have found out who the Gray Friar’s 
hero is — Abraham.” 

“ Abraham } ” Billy repeated. 

“Yes, Cousin Charles told me. Do you 
know I have been thinking, Billy, that if any- 
body could cheer Louis up, it would be the 
Gray Friar.” 

“ They are not very likely to meet,” said 
Billy. 


CHAPTER TENTH 

CHIEFLY TALK 

A RE you ready, Betsy ? ” 
jljL “ Can’t you wait, Billy, till I finish 
my grammar lesson ? I have some poetry to 
analyze. It will only take a minute.” 

“ It will take onfy a minute, you should say, 
though that isn’t true. I’ll give you ten.” 

“ Do stop talking if you want me to hurry.” 
Elizabeth opened her book, while her brother 
proceeded to amuse himself and annoy Cyrus 
by means of a broom straw. Miss Unadilla 
sat by the window sewing. 

“ I’ll do it aloud, that’s quicker,” Elizabeth 
said, beginning — 

‘ We were the first that ever burst ’ — 

We is a personal pronoun — ” 

“ Let us hope we’ll be the last to meet such 
a fate,” murmured Billy. 

Miss Unadilla laughed. 


95 


96 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Elizabeth looked up. “ Oh — well — of course 
I mean — 

<< < We were the first that ever burst 
Into the open sea.’ 

Now, Billy, don’t make fun. Miss Una, he is 
tormenting Cyrus.” 

“ I know it,” Miss Una said plaintively. Her 
heart was particularly tender where Cyrus was 
concerned. 

“ I won’t do it any more,” William protested, 
for he was fond of Miss Una. He sauntered 
from the room, to return a moment later with 
the announcement that Miss Martha Doane was 
coming up the street. 

Elizabeth rose. “ I’ll go, then. I don’t like 
Miss Martha, she asks so many questions.” 

“You haven’t much chance when she is 
around,” Billy agreed. 

“ She gets her pronouns so mixed,” continued 
Elizabeth, ignoring Billy. “ She asked me how 
Miss Unadilla was, and said, ‘ I saw she and 
Dr. Milward going to church,’ and she shows 
her teeth so when she smiles.” 

“ My dear, I think you are very critical,” 
said Miss Una, “ so do many people.” 


CHIEFLY TALK 


97 


“ Her smile is all on the outside,” William 
explained. 

Miss Una regarded him thoughtfully. “ There 
is some truth in that,” she said. 

“ Thank you,” cried William, with a profound 
bow. 

“ It is a pity the good things he says have to 
be mixed up with so many foolish ones,” Elizabeth 
remarked, seizing an opportunity to get even. 

You just wish you could say them yourself,” 
William retorted. Then going back to the sub- 
ject in hand, he continued, “ Now Miss Hyacinth 
smiles with her eyes.” 

“ I said that myself,” cried Elizabeth. 

“ I don’t dispute it. I simply mention it as 
a fact. What I want to know is, what happens 
when she does it .? ” 

“ You smile back and want to hug her.” 

“ Now, Betsy, you never know what I mean. 
When she holds her lips shut, how do you know 
she is smiling ? ” 

“ It must be her soul looking out. Don’t you 
think so. Miss Una ? ” 

“ I think you and Billy had better go,” Miss 
Una said, laughing. 


98 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


The discussion was ended by Miss Martha’s 
step on the porch. The children disappeared 
with lightning despatch, and a few minutes later 
were walking up the road toward Hyacinth Hill. 
William carried some books which Miss Una was 
sending to the Griffin, as they called Louis. 

Since that first uncomfortable encounter they 
had seen Louis but once, and on this occasion 
he had been wrapped in gloomy indifference, 
not quite so disagreeable as open rudeness ; but 
even the charms of their beautiful Miss Hya- 
cinth could not lure them often into the presence 
of this ogre. 

On the other side of the bridge they overtook 
Belle Barton, who greeted them cordially. Belle 
had shown herself very friendly. She had called 
with her mother one evening, and afterward at 
school had taken Elizabeth under her protection 
in a way which, if slightly patronizing, was also 
flattering, for she was one of the older girls and 
an acknowledged leader. 

Mrs. Barton said Belle couldn’t decide whether 
she was a young lady or a little girl, and so 
gravitated between the two. At times under the 
weight of her sixteen years she was oppressively 


CHIEFLY TALK 


99 


dignified, at others she cast dignity to the winds 
and was the flyaway Belle of old. 

This side was uppermost to-day, as it could 
hardly help being, in the crisp air, with the 
maples and sweet gum trees all ablaze with red 
and gold, and the leaves lying thick on the path. 
They rustled along gayly, tossed leaves at each 
other, ran races, and laughed at everything and 
nothing, full of the joy of living. 

Belle lost her hair ribbon and had to stop at 
the stile to put her locks in order, while William 
went back to look for it. 

“ Do you know,” she said to Elizabeth, “ you 
remind me a little of Rosalind Whittredge.” 

“ Do I ? ” Betsy exclaimed, much gratified, for 
she had heard before of this wonderful Rosalind, 
who was Belle’s most intimate friend, around 
whom centred all the interesting happenings of 
a certain summer four years ago, of which Belle 
was fond of telling. She was better than a 
guide-book for pointing out the interesting 
features and landmarks of Friendship. 

There was the Whittredge house with the 
griffins on the doorstep, where Rosalind’s grand- 
mother lived in semi-seclusion, and her beautiful 


L. of C. 


100 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


but haughty daughter, Miss Genevieve. There was 
the Gilpin place at the other end of the town, 
which the Allan Whittredges now occupied, the 
scene of more than one adventure in the days 
when it stood deserted, and the lawsuit over the 
Gilpin will was going on. There was the magi- 
cian’s shop, where the lost ring had come to 
light, where Morgan, the cabinet-maker, still 
worked. 

“ I had a letter from Rosalind yesterday,” Belle 
continued. “ She is coming to spend Christmas, 
so we shall all be together again.” 

Billy came up the road, waving aloft a stick 
with a bright red ribbon attached. 

Thank you, William, I’ll tie it tight this time. 
You know,” Belle went on as she knotted her 
ribbon vigorously, “we used to have a secret 
society called the Arden Foresters. It seems 
rather childish now, but we keep our badges and 
always wear them when we are together. Did 
you ever notice mine ? ” she held out a little 
enamelled oak leaf. 

The others admired it and asked about the 
society. 

“ It isn’t really a society now, except that we 


CHIEFLY TALK 


lOl 


try to remember the motto, ‘ Good in everything,’ ” 
Belle explained. 

“ ‘ Good in everything,’ ” William repeated. “ I 
wonder if there is any in Louis Gilderoy ” 

“He is horrid,' isn’t he.?” said Belle. “And 
Miss Hyacinth is such a dear. Still, I suppose 
there is some good in him. Jack, my brother, 
went to school with Louis one year and liked him 
ever so much. He was the most popular boy 
there, he said.” 

“ Do you know, Billy,” Elizabeth said when they 
left Belle at the turn of the road, “ I wish some- 
body would tell Louis about the journey and the 
city, — the Gray Friar’s idea. I have been think- 
ing about it, and it seems to me it makes it much 
easier to stand things if you know they are part 
of the way, and that there is something good 
ahead of you.” 

“ He’d think it was silly,” William remarked 
coolly. “You know, Betsy, you are always taking 
up some notion about somebody or something. 
Of course, I know I have to stand my eyes, but 
that does not make it easy. You see you haven’t 
ever had much the matter with you.” 

“No, I haven’t,” she assented meekly; “but 


102 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


sometimes I’m homesick. And then, Billy, you 
don’t understand. I didn’t mean just bearing 
things, but being glad of them if they belonged 
to our path.” 

William found this quite too lofty a plane, and 
appealed to Miss Hyacinth, whom they found 
superintending Uncle Ben in some outdoor work. 
She considered the question thoughtfully, leaning 
against the sun-dial. 

“ Perhaps we may be able to look back at hard 
things, and be glad of them; but to be glad at 
the time is another matter,” she said. 

“ But it makes it easier if you know there is 
something good ahead of you,” Elizabeth urged. 
“ And there always is, if you are seeking it. The 
Gray Friar said so, and Cousin Charles.” 

“We can’t stand up against so much authority, 
Billy ; ” Hyacinth drew Elizabeth’s hand within 
her arm as she spoke. “ She is probably right. 
Have you had any more encounters with your 
friend, the Gray Friar, of late } ” she asked. 

They walked up to the house still talking, Will- 
iam being in an argumentative mood. “ Betsy is 
always making believe,” he said. 

“ It is such fun to pretend, and I suppose you 


CHIEFLY TALK 


103 


have to give it up when you are grown,” Eliza- 
beth was saying regretfully as Hyacinth ushered 
them into the sitting room, where her brother was 
occupied with some drawing materials. 

“ On the contrary,” Louis said, looking up with 
a half smile, “you’ll pretend more than ever, 
then.” 

Elizabeth surveyed him with gravity. “Then 
when I am grown I shall pretend to be nice,” 
she replied. 

Hyacinth smiled. “There will be no need for 
any pretence, dear, I am sure.” 

Louis’s face showed a grim amusement. He 
was less gloomy to-day, and actually went to the 
length of expressing his thanks for the books. 

On the way home William asked, “ Betsy, did 
you mean what you said to Louis ? ” 

“ What did I say ? ” 

“About pretending to be nice when you were 
grown.” 

“Why, yes, I meant it” 

“ But I mean, did you mean that he is not 
nice ” 

Betsy opened her eyes. “I don’t think he is, 
do you ? ” 


104 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ Upon my word, Betsy, I don’t know whether 
you are clever or stupid.” 

Elizabeth laughed. “ I think I must be clever, 
Billy, if you can’t understand me.” 

“Anyhow, he thought you meant it,” William 
said. 


CHAPTER ELEVENTH 


BETSY SPEAKS HER MIND 

W ILLIAM was right, Louis had felt Eliza- 
beth’s remark. He laughed at it, and 
spoke of her carelessly to Hyacinth as a bright 
little thing; yet, though he would not for a moment 
acknowledge to himself that it hurt, he could not 
forget it. 

He also remembered the wide, surprised eyes 
she had turned upon him at their first meeting. 
Even then he had felt something like a twinge 
of shame, but only a twinge. Since his accident 
it had not occurred to him to care what any one 
thought of him, or, indeed, to imagine that any- 
thing like patience or amiability could be asked 
of one in his condition. By her devotion. Hya- 
cinth helped this attitude of mind. She was 
always the same, no matter how trying and ill- 
tempered her brother might be. Through Eliza- 

105 


I06 ON HYACINTH HILL 

beth’s eyes he had had a faint glimpse of himself 
as others saw him. 

He found himself dwelling upon it in an absurd 
way. He felt Elizabeth did not appreciate what 
he had to endure, and he wished for an opportunity 
to defend himself. In the meantime he became 
a little less moody, and more responsive to his 
sister’s efforts to divert him. Hyacinth began to 
be lighter of heart. 

But poor Louis had lived too long in the 
dungeon of despair to breathe freely outside for 
long. The reaction came. In the first place, 
November began with a week of rain and gloom, 
which naturally had its effect upon the invalid’s 
spirits. Then Hyacinth, unable in her disappoint- 
ment to see that this was inevitable and would 
not last, was not so wise as she might have been. 
She annoyed her brother with attentions and 
suggestions, until at length the torrent of his 
impatience and misery burst with unexpected 
fury upon her head. 

It was over the trifle of an uncut magazine. 
There was no paper-cutter at hand, his own 
knife had been mislaid, Ranney had gone to town 
on an errand, and Hyacinth was not within call. 


BETSY SPEAKS HER MIND 


07 


When after half an hour’s absence she returned, 
Louis greeted her with some bitter remark about 
his own helplessness and the forgetfulness of 
other people. 

“ Dear, I am so sorry,” Hyacinth said, hasten- 
ing to find the paper-cutter. “ Let me do it 
for you,” she added, advancing to take the maga- 
zine. 

“ For mercy’s sake, let me alone ! ” he cried, 
throwing the book violently across the room. 
“There has got to be an end to this — chained 
like a bear to a log ! ” 

“Oh, Louis, please don’t,” his sister begged. 
“ Don’t say such dreadful things.” 

But Louis, with a savage satisfaction in caus- 
ing pain, continued to pour forth a torrent of 
rebellious words. It was more than Hyacinth 
could stand. Covering her face with her hands 
she hurried from the room without seeing Eliza- 
beth, who stood just outside the door, in the hall, 
an astonished and indignant witness of the un- 
happy scene. 

There was a moment’s silence in which Eliza- 
beth tried to decide whether to follow Hyacinth 
with sympathy, or to speak her mind to Louis. 


io8 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Her indignation won the day ; like an avenging 
fury she faced Louis, pushing the door to behind 
her and standing against it. 

“You are mean and horrid — I despise you,” 
she said, stamping her foot in emphasis. Her 
cheeks flamed, her eyes shone. “ I don’t care 
if you can’t walk — you don’t deserve to. 
There are lots of people who have as hard a 
time as you. — Suppose you were blind and deaf ? 
— You are not brave a bit. If you were a sol- 
dier, you would run 2iW2iy. You have no right 
to say such things to Miss Hyacinth. She is 
sweet and good. I don’t know how she came to 
have such a brother.” Betsy’s eloquence began 
to falter. 

“Upon my word!” Louis exclaimed, recov- 
ering from his first surprise, “but you are a 
fury.” 

“ I am glad of one thing, — that I am not your 
sister. Perhaps you are glad, too, but you aren’t 
as glad as I am. I despise you ! ” With this 
parting shot Elizabeth retired. 

A storm clears the atmosphere; an electric 
shock is tonic in its effects; the force of her 
indignation tore from Louis’s eyes for the mo- 


BETSY SPEAKS HER MIND 


109 


ment the veil of self-pity and gave him a new 
and vivid picture of himself — no mere glimpse 
this time. He was not so angry as the occasion 
seemed to warrant. How pretty Elizabeth 
looked with her scarlet cheeks and blazing eyes ! 
Of course it was wrong of him to speak to his 
sister as he had, but she knew he did not mean 
it. Elizabeth did not understand. He very 
much wished she had not heard. She called him 
a coward, Louis Gilderoy, who dared do any- 
thing! He had never before been called a cow- 
ard. It was not true, but did she really think 
it ? She said she despised him. The more he 
thought of it the more troubled he grew. 

Hyacinth, meanwhile, was finding the journey 
of life altogether too difficult to be borne. She 
had shed some bitter tears over Louis’s unkind 
words, but it was not in her nature to find relief 
in this way, and now she sat in her own room, 
gazing straight before her with dull, unhappy 
eyes. 

Things could not go on in this way, and yet 
what was to be done ? Before her a blank, gray 
wall seemed to rise, shutting out hope and mak- 
ing courage a vain word. 


no 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


It was not only Louis, though he was her 
greatest trouble. Every day she was making 
fresh discoveries about the cost of living. She 
was haunted by the fear that she had been 
wrong to come to Hyacinth Hill to live, and 
side by side with the fear grew her love for 
the place and her desire to keep it. A very 
small part of her aunt’s fortune would have 
made things so different. Hyacinth seldom 
allowed her thoughts to dwell upon this, but to- 
day she was conscious of a feeling of bitterness 
toward Madam Gilderoy that she could not con- 
trol. For a moment she almost regretted her 
refusal to contest the will. 

The stillness of the house struck her with 
sudden alarm. Suppose something had hap- 
pened to Louis ! She had no idea how long 
she had been sitting there. She hurried into 
the hall, pausing at the head of the stairs. The 
sound of her brother’s voice speaking to Ranney 
reassured her and she returned to her room. 
For the first time since his accident there was 
some anger in her heart toward Louis. She 
did not wish to see him just yet. 

As she sat down again, her eyes rested on 


BETSY SPEAKS HER MIND 


1 1 1 


the miniature of her great-grandmother which 
hung over her work-table. This was the Louise 
Hyacinth who had brought Hyacinth Hill into 
the Gilderoy family; had it come into the pos- 
session of the second Louise Hyacinth only to 
pass into the hands of strangers ? 

The face was gentle and fair, and wore a 
smile of eighteenth-century serenity. Hyacinth 
felt herself growing calmer as she looked at it. 
She knew little about the life of her great- 
grandmother; but, whatever it had been, she had 
borne it, and it was over now. It was some 
faint comfort to think that troubles could not 
last forever. She must do the best she could ; 
but how she dreaded the long evening and 
Louis’s gloomy face. 

A knock disturbed her. It was Ranney who 
handed her a folded bit of paper. She opened 
it and read, “Dear Hyacinth, Forgive me for 
being such a beast. — Louis.” 

When before had he ever asked her forgive- 
ness ? Hyacinth was deeply touched, every 
other feeling gave way to pitiful tenderness. 
The dark day was coming to an early end, and 
she was glad it was over as she lit the candles 


II2 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


on her dressing-table. She dressed hastily, 
stopping for a moment, however, to consider 
what she should put on, and then choosing a 
gown she knew her brother liked. 

The sitting room was all brightness and cheer 
when she entered, and Louis had his art books 
spread out before him. Hyacinth could not 
trust her voice to refer to the note, but stand- 
ing beside him she laid her hand on his 
shoulder. 

Louis lifted his eyes. “ How pretty you look 
in that white thing,” he said. “ I didn’t know 
but you had taken a vow to wear nothing but 
brown.” 

“Thank you. I suppose I have been rather 
a fright, but I did not think any one cared.” 
Hyacinth smiled on him brightly. 

Something in the words gave Louis a pang. 
He watched her cross the room. How graceful 
and charming she was ! How accustomed to 
admiration — and now nobody cared. 

Hyacinth herself was far from meaning any- 
thing of the kind. Now that the storm had 
passed, she was too happy for such regrets. 
Hope had taken possession of her once more. 


BETSY SPEAKS HER MIND 113 

She enlivened the supper table with an account 
of her shopping expedition that morning, and 
an encounter with Miss Martha Doane ; and 
afterward, going to the piano, she played as 
Louis liked to hear her, snatches of music and 
bits of old songs. The evening which had 
loomed so drearily in prospect passed most 
cheerfully. 

Hyacinth knew nothing of Elizabeth’s visit, 
and Louis did not mention it. 


CHAPTER TWELFTH 

A FRIENDLY COMPACT 

“T HAVE done something dreadful!” 

A Dr. Milward lifted his eyes from the ser- 
mon he was writing and looked in some surprise 
at the excited young person who had entered 
his quiet study like a whirlwind, and now faced 
him on the other side of the table, with this 
startling announcement. 

Carefully laying aside his fountain-pen, he 
asked, “ What have you done, my dear ? ” 

“ I told Louis Gilderoy that he was horrid, 
and that I despised him.” 

A gleam of amusement passed over the 
minister’s face and was gone. “ Those are 
strong words,” he said gravely. “ Despise is 
from the Latin despicere, meaning ‘to look down 
upon.’ Horrid is ‘ frightful, hideous.’ ” 

Elizabeth bit her lip. “ I suppose I oughtn’t 


14 


A FRIENDLY COMPACT 


II5 

to have said it. I didn’t mean exactly that, 
but — Cousin Charles, he zvas horrid, and to 
Miss Hyacinth. Do you think I ought to say 
I am sorry .? ” 

“ Not unless you are, my child. If after 
thinking over it you find you spoke too strongly, 
you can say so.” 

Dr. Milward’s serene and analytical reception 
of her confession had a quieting effect. Eliza- 
beth remembered that this was an hour when 
he did not like to be disturbed, so she went 
back to the deserted sitting room. Miss 
Unadilla and William were neither of them 
to be found, and there was nothing to do but 
cuddle Cyrus on the sofa and wait. 

She had run most of the way from Hyacinth 
Hill in a state of excitement that did not allow 
of any connected thought. Now in the still- 
ness, with Cyrus’s contented purring in her ear, 
she began to consider what she had done. She 
had told the truth, she was sure of that, and 
yet when she remembered Louis sitting there 
quite helpless in his chair, she was almost 
sorry. When she thought of Miss Hyacinth, 
and of Louis’s cruel words, she was not sorry at 


ii6 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


all. The more she went over it, the more uncer- 
tain she was. 

“ Did you really say that, Betsy ? Good for 
you ! ” Billy cried when he heard the story. 

Miss Unadilla, unfastening her wraps, listened 
gravely. “ Perhaps he deserved it,” she said 
doubtfully. 

“ Of course he did,” said William. “ Didn’t 
he answer back, Betsy ? ” 

“No, for I ran away. He said I was a fury. 
I don’t suppose he will ever speak to me 
again,” Elizabeth replied. 

Her brother chuckled. “ I rather guess he 
won’t.” 

“ Do you think I was very wrong. Miss Una ? 
It wasn’t any of my business, but I couldn’t 
help it.” Elizabeth’s eyes were appeahng. 

Miss Unadilla rocked back and forth thought- 
fully. “ I don’t know,” she said. “ I can’t see 
how you dared to do it. It was very wrong in 
him to speak so to his sister ; but men don’t 
know how to endure illness, they are generally 
unreasonable, one has to be patient with them. 
I suppose you didn’t get the knitting-needles.?” 

Now for the first time Elizabeth remembered 


A FRIENDLY COMPACT 


II7 

the errand that had taken her to Hyacinth 
Hill. 

“I wonder if Louis will tell Miss Hyacinth?” 
she exclaimed, suddenly smitten with the ter- 
rible thought that perhaps she could not go to 
Hyacinth Hill any more. 

“ ‘ And darest thou then 

To beard the lion in his den, 

The Douglas in his hall ? 

And thinkest thou hence unscathed to go ? 

No, by St. Bride of Bothwell, no ! ’ ” 

Billy quoted with tremendous emphasis. 

The days that followed were not exactly happy 
for Elizabeth. After her excitement cooled she 
began to regret what she had done, though she 
persisted in the belief that she had said only 
what was true. The worst of it was the un- 
certainty as to how Miss Hyacinth felt toward her. 
And William, tickled with what he considered the 
appropriateness of the lines, was forever teasingly 
repeating, “ ‘ And darest thou then — ? ’ ” 

“ I can’t take it back, but I can say I am 
sorry I said it,” was the conclusion at which 
she finally arrived. 

Miss Gilderoy often dropped in at the min- 


Il8 ON HYACINTH HILL 

ister’s on her way from town ; it was a pleasant 
resting-place, and Miss Una gave her many 
valuable housekeeping hints. When almost a 
week passed without her appearance, Elizabeth 
felt certain she must be the cause. 

When Sunday came. Miss Hyacinth sat in 
her usual place across the aisle in church ; but 
Elizabeth was afraid to look in her direction, 
keeping her eyes instead upon Mrs. Thomas 
McLean, a person she did not in the least 
admire. Mainie always took particular notice of 
her in a good-natured, gushing manner that dis- 
pleased Elizabeth’s fastidious taste as much as 
her flyaway finery. 

After service, waiting at the door for Miss 
Una who had stopped to discuss some church 
matters, Elizabeth became aware of an arm 
about her shoulders, and Miss Gilderoy’s voice 
asked, “ Where have you been this long time, 
little girl ? ” 

The color rushed to her face, and for a mo- 
ment she had not a word to say. Could it be 
that Miss Hyacinth did not know, after all ? 

“ Louis told me to say to you, that he should 
like to see you. Can’t you come up to-morrow 
afternoon > ” 


A FRIENDLY COMPACT 


II9 

This was still more surprising. “I — guess I 
can,” Elizabeth stammered. 

“ I have no idea what he wants,” Hyacinth 
said. “ He called to me just as I was leaving. 
— Thank you. Miss Una, he has seemed better 
the last few days, though the weather has been 
trying.” 

Elizabeth did not enjoy the idea of facing 
Louis, but she could not refuse his request. 
She felt it had not been quite fair to run away 
as she did without giving him a chance to 
reply, and if he were going to take his revenge 
now, she must let him have it. At least Miss 
Hyacinth was still fond of her. 

“ So you are going again to beard the Douglas 
in his den, are you ? ” said William, mockingly, 
when she came down with her hat on the next 
afternoon. I’ll be up after a while to see how 
you are getting on.” 

“ I don’t need your assistance, thank you,” 
Elizabeth replied loftily; but she was not at all 
sorry when Miss Una announced that she was 
going up to see Hyacinth about the Christmas 
entertainment for the Sunday-school. 

“And thinkest thou hence unscathed to go.?” 


120 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


rang in her ears as they walked up the hill. 
Her face was very grave. 

Hyacinth met them at the door. Louis is 
in the dining room, Elizabeth,” she said, and 
at once carried Miss Una off to the sitting 
room. 

Rather timidly Elizabeth entered the half-open 
door, and paused. Louis, who sat beside one 
of the windows, turned and held out his hand. 
“Well, Elizabeth,” he said. 

His handsome, boyish face was without the 
disfiguring frown to-day, and his smile was like 
Hyacinth’s. Elizabeth, whose sympathies were 
always ready, felt the appeal of his helpless- 
ness. She advanced slowly. 

“ I was afraid you had decided to cut my ac- 
quaintance altogether,” Louis went on. “ There 
is something I want to say to you, and as I 
can’t get to you, I had to ask you to come 
here.” 

Elizabeth stood beside him, one hand on the 
back of a chair. “ I want to tell you that I am 
sorry for some of the things I said. I am 
afraid it wasn’t exactly fair.” 

“ When people are angry they are apt to say 





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A FRIENDLY COMPACT 


I2I 


things they do not mean. I did to Hyacinth 
that day, but I am not going to excuse myself. 
I had no right to speak as I did. I have been 
thinking over what you said, and I suppose it 
is true — a good deal of it. I never used to be 
a coward, but perhaps I am one now. — It’s 
awfully hard, you know, to be helpless when 
there is so much I want to do.” 

“I know it is. I hadn’t any right — it wasn’t 
fair,” Elizabeth cried, and tears rose to her eyes. 

“ I suppose, as you said, it might be worse, 
and they say sometime I shall be better. — I 
don’t know, at any rate — ” 

Elizabeth, resting her folded arms on the 
chair back, hid her face on them. 

“ Why, Elizabeth, you aren’t crying ? There 
is nothing to cry about. I don’t mind, really. 
You told the truth. I ought to thank you. I 
do, only it hurt a little to be called a coward.” 

I am so sorry,” Elizabeth faltered, her eyes 
still hidden. 

“ Sorry for what ? ” 

“ That you can’t walk, and that I said you 
were a coward. I — won’t you forgive me ? ” 

Louis leaned forward and gently pulled one 


122 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


of her hands away. “ Look at me, Elizabeth. 
It isn’t worth crying about. You were right, 
and I am really obliged to you. I haven’t 
anything to forgive, but I should like to be 
friends. Will you ? That is, if you think it 
worth while, with such a worthless fellow as I.” 

Elizabeth lifted her head and smiled through 
her tears. “ Of course I want to be friends. I 
like you very much, Louis. I don’t think you 
are a coward — not now. If I were in your 
place, I should be dreadful, I know. Billy says 
I have never had anything much the matter with 
me, so I can’t understand.” 

They clasped hands warmly, and Elizabeth 
sat down and wiped her eyes. 

“ I told Hyacinth I was sorry,” Louis said. 
“ She is awfully good to me, but somehow it is 
the people who are the best to you that you flare 
out at.” 

“ I know Billy is dreadfully cross to me some- 
times, and I am to him.” 

“ I don’t believe you are dreadfully cross 
ever,” Louis said. 

“ Yes, I am, I should think you would know 
it,” Elizabeth laughed. “ I am not good at all. 


A FRIENDLY COMPACT 


123 


I read story-books instead of studying my les- 
sons sometimes, and then I have to learn so 
many lines of poetry as a punishment.” 

“ There is nobody to punish me, and some- 
times when I mean to be specially decent I am 
worse than ever,” Louis sighed. ‘'At times the 
days are never ending.” 

When Hyacinth came to tell Elizabeth that 
Miss Una was ready to go, she found them talk- 
ing together like old friends, and Louis with a 
brighter face than he had worn since his acci- 
dent. 

“ It is settled, then ? ” he said with a smile, 
as Elizabeth rose. 

“ Yes, indeed, of course it is,” she responded 
warmly. 

“ What are you and Louis settling } ” Hya- 
cinth asked, as they left the room together. 

“ Oh, just that we are going to be friends,” 
said Elizabeth. 


CHAPTER THIRTEENTH 

THE MAGIC TRUNK 

“ T SHOULD like to go about giving people 
exactly what they want at Christmas,” Miss 
Una remarked. “ I mean people who are 

poor.” 

Mrs. Parton nodded her head emphatically. 
“ I know what you mean,” she said. “ People 
with money can gratify their whims once in a 
while, and who does not have foolish desires 
now and then ? There is something tragic 
about never having anything you do not actu- 
ally need.” 

“ It never occurred to me before,” said Hya- 
cinth. Do let me fill your cup. Miss Unadilla. 
You have had such a cold drive.” 

Thank you. Hyacinth, your tea is delicious. 
I can’t resist.” Miss Una smiled on her pretty 
hostess. 

She and Mrs. Parton had driven out a mile 

124 


THE MAGIC TRUNK 


125 


beyond Hyacinth Hill to inquire for a sick 
child, and on their return had stopped to kill 
two birds, as her companion expressed it, — get 
warm and make a call. Nor were they the only 
persons who found the north wind unexpectedly 
cold this afternoon. Dr. Milward, out for his 
constitutional, was presently ushered into the 
sitting room. 

“ I couldn’t pass you by a day like this, 
Hyacinth,” he said. 

‘‘This ill wind has blown me a great deal of 
good ; I am grateful to it,” Hyacinth responded, 
pushing an arm-chair nearer the fire. “ You are 
just in time for a cup of tea. Dr. Milward.” 

“ Here come some other storm-tossed travellers,” 
Mrs. Parton exclaimed, pointing toward the win- 
dow. “ Your boarders. Miss Una, and my Belle 
and Katherine Roberts.” 

The young persons coming up the drive did 
not seem to mind the wind. The keen air that 
chilled older blood stirred their pulses and made 
their faces glow. 

“May we come in. Miss Hyacinth.? — Oh, you 
have company ! ” Belle paused at the door. 

“ Come in, of course. I am delighted to see 


126 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


you. This is a strictly informal tea drinking,” 
Hyacinth replied. 

“You have met us before,” added Mrs. Parton. 

“Why, it is mother,” laughed Belle, as she 
entered followed by the others. “ I thought 
you were having a party.” 

“I am — the nicest sort,” Hyacinth answered, 
greeting her visitors and pouring more tea. 

“To go back to what we were talking about 
when Cousin Charles came in,” Miss Una began 
after the newcomers had subsided, the girls on 
the divan in the chimney-corner, William mak- 
ing himself useful beside Hyacinth at the tea- 
table ; “ what do you suppose old Mrs. Bailey 
wants for a Christmas gift.? She hasn’t left her 
room for a year, you know, and never will 
again.” 

“An umbrella,” suggested Belle. 

“Or an automobile,” added Billy. 

“Neither of those, but it is just as funny. I 
asked her to tell me something she would like, 
and she could think of nothing but a trunk.” 

“ I don’t believe she ever travelled fifty 
miles from Friendship in her life,” said Mrs. 
Parton. 


THE MAGIC TRUNK 


127 


“ Who is she ? ” Hyacinth asked. “ Is she 
poor ? ” 

“She is a widow — has always been one so 
far as I know — and she supported herself by 
sewing till her hands became crippled with 
rheumatism,” Mrs. Parton explained. “ Her 
niece, Miss Julia, who is clerk in Mr. Warren’s 
store, takes care of her ; but they have a strug- 
gling time, and occasionally have to be helped 
a little. She is a good soul, and I for one 
should like to give her a trunk if it would 
make her any happier.” 

“ Though groceries would seem more sensible,” 
Miss Una added. “There is something rather 
pathetic about it. As Mrs. Parton said, it seems 
tragic never to have anything you do not actu- 
ally need.” Hyacinth looked thoughtfully into 
her cup. Feeling the pinch of a narrow income 
herself, her heart was tender toward those whose 
trials were of the same sort. 

Dr. Milward smiled. “ Some people would 
say she was fortunate to have what she needs, 
but then it is not easy to know a person’s real 
needs. ‘ Life is more than meat.’ ” 

While the talk was going on Elizabeth slipped 


128 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


across the hall to the dining room to see Louis. 
Since the day of their compact she had become 
his firm friend and staunch defender, and Louis 
was making a real fight against depression and 
despair, losing many battles, indeed, but not giv- 
ing up. He still shrank from meeting people 
and if possible always made his escape from the 
sitting room when there were callers. 

“How are you, Betsy.?” he said, laying down 
his book. “What is all that chattering about.?” 

Elizabeth told him of old Mrs. Bailey and her 
funny wish. 

“Poor old lady, she is as badly off as I am, 
isn’t she .? ” was Louis’s comment. 

“ If you could see where she lives, you would 
think she was worse off. It is a queer little 
house with hardly any paint left on it, and her 
room has a rag carpet and a stove. I went to 
see her with Miss Una once. I don’t think 
you’d like it, Louis. — But she seemed . quite 
cheerful.” 

“ Moral,” said Louis. . 

“Now, Louis, please — you know I did not 
mean that. Besides, you are quite cheerful 
yourself lately.” 


THE MAGIC TRUNK 


129 


Louis shook his head. “ Not much to brag 
of, Betsy. I believe I’d rather like to give the 
old lady a trunk.” 

Not long after this Elizabeth went one after- 
noon to ask for Mrs. Bailey and take her a 
glass of jelly, Miss Unadilla, who regarded the 
old woman as her special charge, being housed 
with a cold. Elizabeth enjoyed her errand ; 
it gave her a new sense of usefulness and 
independence. 

Mrs. Bailey, who spent the greater part of the 
day alone, was most pleased to have company. 
“You’re the little girl that’s stayin’ up at the 
minister’s, ain’t you.-*” she said, and nothing 
would do but her caller must sit down and 
submit to be catechised. 

Elizabeth did not resent her questions as she 
did Miss Martha’s, so she drew up a chair and 
replied to them all, good-naturedly. 

Mrs. Bailey, when she was not confined to 
her bed, always sat by the window, where she 
could look out on the street with a pair of faded 
blue eyes that in spite of age and rheumatism 
still found life interesting. 

“ It’s real nice for you and your brother to 


130 ON HYACINTH HILL 

be Up there,” she continued. “Miss Martha 
Doane says his eyes are bad. Where’s your pa 
and ma ? ” 

“ Father is in Washington, and mother is in 
France with my sister.” 

“France. — That’s pretty fur off, ain’t it.? At 
school we used to say France looked like a tea- 
pot and Italy like a boot. Seems as if it had 
kind of fixed ’em in my mind. Do you study 
geography .? ” 

“ I have finished geography,” Elizabeth said. 

“You don’t say.? Learnin’ comes easy to 
some. I always liked geography, and I used to 
say I was goin’ to travel some day; but the 
nearest I ever come to it is livin’ here on the 
road to the depot. The depot is just down 
there a little piece, you know.” Mrs. Bailey 
pointed over her shoulder. 

“’Most everybody that goes away passes here, 
and when I see ’em with their travellin’" bags 
and the expressman with the trunks, seems like 
I know how it feels to be a-goin’ somewhere 
myself.” There was a happy light in the faded 
eyes; Elizabeth smiled sympathetically. 

“Julia got me a time-table,” Mrs. Bailey went 


THE MAGIC TRUNK 


I3I 

on. “She knows the ticket man over to the 
depot — an’ it’s real interestin’.” 

To Elizabeth, who loved to pretend, this all 
had a familiar sound, and suggested the Gray 
Friar’s idea. So she told Mrs. Bailey about it; 
how in one sense everybody was a traveller ; 
and how the paths ran in every direction, cross- 
ing and recrossing as the roads do on a railway 
map. 

Her listener nodded her head in eager appre- 
ciation. “ Seems like there’s a heap of comfort 
to be got out of makin’ believe. Julia, now, 
thinks it’s all foolishness; but mercy me, it’s half 
the pleasure I’ve had. And so accordin’ to 
that I am a-travellin’ after all. Well, well ! 
Looks like I never got very fur along, but I 
might have gone further and fared worse, as they 
say. It all sounds real pretty. That about the 
city, too ; but dearie me, what would a poor old 
woman like me want with a whole city, just a 
little house is enough.” 

“ That about the city is out of the Bible,” 
Elizabeth explained, “ and it stands for the thing 
that belongs to you, that you are going to find 
some day.” It was not easy to make it clear. 


132 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Mrs. Bailey nodded. “ It is a pretty idea,” she 
said. 

Elizabeth rose. “ I must go now.” 

“ Come and see me again, dearie, and tell me 
more about travellin’. If you was old and 
crippled, you’d be glad to have a spry little girl 
come to see you.” 

Elizabeth laughed. “I’ll come again, Mrs. 
Bailey. You see our paths have crossed.” 

“ So they have — it’s a real nice idea. Thank 
Miss Una for the jelly. Folks is mighty kind to 
this old traveller.” 

Elizabeth told Louis about her visit to Mrs. 
Bailey. “ I know now why she wants a trunk — 
it is to help her make believe she is travelling.” 

She had a graphic way of telling things, and 
her picture of the old woman at the window, 
watching people pass on their way to the station, 
impressed Louis and aroused his sympathy. He 
remembered a steamer trunk bought a few weeks 
before his accident and never used, and Ranney 
was sent to the storeroom in search of it. 

He found it and brought it down, and Louis 
and Elizabeth decided it would do finely. It had 
received a few scratches on the journey to Friend- 


THE MAGIC TRUNK 


133 


ship, but these Louis said could be touched with 
a little varnish, and with her initials painted on 
one end it would be as good as new. Hyacinth 
entering the sitting room found Elizabeth on the 
floor beside the trunk, and Louis looking very 
animated as they decided these important de- 
tails. 

“ Have her full name on it by all means,” said 
Hyacinth. “ I know she will like that best.” If 
her brother had been proposing to give away her 
great-grandmother’s linen chest, she would hardly 
have demurred, seeing him so bright. 

There must have been a bit of magic about 
that trunk, for through Louis’s interest in it 
several steps were taken away from the morbid 
depression that was spoiling his life. 

Although he and Elizabeth had become firm 
friends, and he did not object to seeing William, 
or even Belle Barton once in a while. Hyacinth 
could never get him into the sitting room on 
the afternoons when her friends dropped in for 
tea. 

Friendship was finding out how pleasant it was 
at Hyacinth Hill, and what a charming hostess 
Miss Gilderoy made. Everybody was sorry for 


134 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


her, used as she was to city life, now tied down 
to a quiet country place with a fretful invalid. It 
was only charitable to be friendly and not count 
visits. Having gone once from some such unself- 
ish motive, they went again to enjoy themselves ; 
so the custom grew of looking in at Hyacinth Hill 
on Saturday afternoons. 

It was on one of these occasions that Elizabeth 
stood beside Louis’s chair and in her most coaxing 
manner asked, “ Won’t you do something for me, 
Louis ? ” 

“ No, Betsy, I don’t think I will.” 

“ Then you are not kind — you don’t like me ! ” 

“ Oh, Betsy, what a wheedler ! I am kind and 
I like you, but I am not going into the drawing- 
room to be stared at like a tame bear.” 

“ I don’t think you are very tame,” Elizabeth 
remarked gravely. 

“ But I am the bear all right, I suppose.” 
Louis smiled at her. “You know people do stare, 
or they try not to, which is just as bad, and I 
don’t propose to make a Roman holiday.” 

“ That is a very disagreeable thing to say. 
There are only Cousin Charles and Belle and 
Mrs. Whittredge, and they are talking about the 


THE MAGIC TRUNK 135 

trunk, — about putting things in it for Christmas. 
Besides — ” 

“Well?” 

“ You’ll say it is preaching.” 

“ I call things by their right names, Betsy ; but 
when have I ever objected to your sermons?” 

“You said,” Elizabeth spoke slowly, “you 
wished there was something you could do for Miss 
Hyacinth to make up for all she does for you, 
and she’d rather — ” 

“Botheration! I wish I had held my tongue. 
Did Hyacinth send you?” 

“Louis, you know she didn’t, but — ” 

“You needn’t rub it in,” Louis exclaimed 
rather fiercely. “ Call Ranney for me, please.” 

Elizabeth disappeared, pausing in the hall an 
instant to clap her hands silently. 

Louis found the ordeal not so terrible after all. 
Ranney rolled him in so quickly and quietly the 
group around the tea-table hardly knew he was 
there till he was safe in his favorite corner, and 
Elizabeth had joined him, full of pride and 
delight. Nobody stared, and the flush of pleasure 
on Hyacinth’s face would have made up for it if 
they had. 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


136 

Mrs. Allan Whittredge, with her sweet face and 
soft voice, crossed the room and sat beside him, ex- 
pressing in the simplest way her pleasure at seeing 
him. Then Mr. Whittredge came in with Colonel 
Parton, and while they were having tea. Belle and 
Dr. Milward came over to Louis’s corner, and the 
conversation turned to Mrs. Bailey’s trunk, which 
stood all ready to be delivered, in the hall. They 
grew merry over the discussion of what to put in it, 
and from this drifted into Christmas matters in gen- 
eral, the home coming of the college boys, and the 
visit of Rosalind Whittredge ; and through it all 
Louis was so like his old engaging self, except for 
his helplessness, that Hyacinth could hardly keep 
the tears from her eyes. 


CHAPTER FOURTEENTH 

HOLLY WREATHS 

B etsy, come on ! We are going down to 
trim the church; Miss Hyacinth is wait- 
ing.” 

Elizabeth sat on her foot in one corner of the 
divan with Cyrus beside her, an open book in her lap. 
She was repeating something under her breath, 
keeping time with a small fist that beat the 
cushions rhythmically. 

“Yes, Billy, I’ll come in a moment; but don’t 
wait. I’ll overtake you. I have just four lines to 
learn.” 

The holiday season was hard on Elizabeth. 
She could not keep her thoughts on her lessons. 
Always confident that there was plenty of time for 
everything, she frequently awoke to discover that 
something had been crowded out, the some- 
thing usually being a lesson. 

The interest of the moment absorbed her, and 
137 


138 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


to counteract this, Dr. Milward had begun to 
exact, as a penalty for carelessly prepared lessons, 
so many lines of poetry, committed to memory. 
The children of the present day learned too little 
poetry, he said, and it was an economic device 
thus to turn punishment to account. 

Elizabeth did not mind very much. The poem 
chosen for her was “ The Lady of the Lake,” and 
she was quite alive to the romantic charm of its 
spirited, flowing metre. 

^ For still the burden of thy minstrelsy 

Was Knighthood’s dauntless deed, and Beauty’s match- 
less eye,”’ 

she repeated as she put on her coat and hat. 

William and Miss Gilderoy had reached Main 
Street before she overtook them. Between them 
they carried a rod on which were hung a number 
of holly and pine wreaths. 

“ Cousin Charles doesn’t like me to skip a bit. 
I began to learn just the interesting parts, but 
he made me go back,” Elizabeth said, her mind 
still on poetry. 

“You are skipping this minute,” remarked 
Billy. “We’ll make you go back if you don’t 
look out.” 


HOLLY WREATHS 


139 


You are so very bright,” Elizabeth exclaimed, 
quieting down to a more dignified pace. “ There 
is a lot of it that is stupid description,” she went 
on. “ You might think Scotland was the only 
country in the world. I don’t believe it at all.” 

“ It is poetic license, I suppose,” Hyacinth said 
gayly, drawing Betsy’s hand within her arm. 

“ A lie without any sense,” observed William. 

“ Why, Billy, what a thing to say ! Walter 
Scott would tell a lie! ” 

“You said yourself you did not believe him. 
What is the difference.^” 

“ I was more polite, anyway. Wasn’t I, Miss 
Hyacinth ? ” 

Miss Gilderoy was laughing. “ Is Dr. Milward 
coming to help us ? ” she asked. 

“ I don’t know,” Elizabeth replied. “ He had 
a visitor. I heard a man’s voice talking in the 
study.” 

“ ‘ For still the burden of thy minstrelsy — ” 

“ Mercy on us, Betsy 1 ” William cried. 

“‘Beauty’s matchless eye,’” Elizabeth contin- 
ued unabashed. “That is you. Miss Hyacinth.” 

“ Thank you,” said Hyacinth. “ I was never 
the subject of minstrelsy so far as I know.” 


140 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ If I were a minstrel — ” William began. 

“There is Belle,” Hyacinth exclaimed, spoiling 
his gallant speech. “ I wonder if she is going to 
help us.” 

It was two days before Christmas, and Hya- 
cinth, who had offered to superintend the trim- 
ming of the little church, had pressed all her 
young friends into service. From being damp 
and chilly, it had turned suddenly colder, with a 
hint of snow in the air that promised Christmas 
weather. The joy of youth was in Hyacinth’s 
veins to-day. Her face glowed, and her eyes 
might very well inspire Betsy’s quotation. 

Belle waved her muff in greeting and waited 
at the gate. “ Rosalind and the boys came last 
night,” she announced. 

“ I hope you engaged their services for me,” 
Hyacinth said. 

“ I told them. I don’t know where the boys 
are. Rosalind is at Miss Celia’s. She will help. 
I am going to stop there.” 

They had just reached the gate of what had 
once been the Gilpin place, where the Allan 
Whittredges now lived, when the front door 
opened, letting out the sound of gay voices. 


HOLLY WREATHS 


I4I 

There’s Rosalind!” cried Belle. “And Jack 
and Maurice, too.” 

“ I am going in for a moment to speak to Mrs. 
Whittredge,” Hyacinth said, as that lady ap- 
peared on the porch with the others. 

William and Elizabeth waited at the gate, 
Elizabeth rather anxious to see this wonderful 
Rosalind, but a little abashed by so many 
strangers. 

“ I can’t go to the church this afternoon. Miss 
Gilderoy,” Mrs. Whittredge was saying ; “ but 
these children will help you. This is my niece, 
Rosalind Whittredge. And have you met Mr. 
Barton and Mr. Roberts ? ” 

The children were quite grown up, Elizabeth 
thought. “Anybody would know Jack, who had 
seen Belle,” she whispered to Billy. 

They all came down the walk in a merry, 
chattering bunch, and at the gate Belle in- 
troduced her friends. Rosalind was a tall, 
fair-haired girl, by no means so remarkable in 
appearance as Elizabeth had been led to expect; 
but a little later, when they walked side by side 
toward the church, Betsy was completely won. 
Rosalind’s manner was so simple and friendly, 
her eyes so soft and deep. 


142 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ Belle wrote to me about you,” she said ; 

I hope you like Friendship as much as I 
do.” 

Elizabeth dimpled and flushed, and replied, 
“ I have heard a great deal about you, too, and 
I do like Friendship ; but we haven’t had so 
many interesting things happen to us.” 

Rosalind laughed. “ I don’t believe we thought 
it so very eventful at the time, it is more in 
looking back at it; but we did have fun that 
summer, didn’t we, Maurice ? ” She turned to 
the tall young fellow at her other side. 

Belle was helping William carry the wreaths, 
and Jack, who walked behind with Hyacinth, 

suddenly seized her end of the rod, slipped off 

a pine wreath, and popped it over Maurice’s 

head, where it hung on his hat in a most ab- 
surd way. 

“ Mercy, Jack ! it will prick him,^’ Belle cried ; 
but Maurice was equal to the occasion. If it 
pricked, he bore it unflinchingly. 

Thank you. Jack,” he said, adjusting it around 
his neck, and walking calmly on, as if this 

novel decoration was quite customary. 

The spirit of frolic was abroad, and no one 


HOLLY WREATHS 143 

could doubt it was Christmas time who saw 
this gay party. 

Rosalind presently looked back to ask, “What 
is Professor Whitney doing in Friendship I 
saw him at the station this morning. I asked 
him if he was here for Christmas, but he said 
not — just for the day.” 

“I don’t know him, who is he ” Jack in- 
quired. 

“ Surely you have heard of him. He lec- 
tured at the university last winter. Father and 
Cousin Louis met him abroad several years ago, 
and they became great friends. I believe he 
isn’t so very well known here in the East. I 
wondered if he could be lecturing in Friend- 
ship,” Rosalind continued. 

While the others were untwisting the ropes of 
cedar, and taking the holly out of the crate, 
Elizabeth went with Miss Hyacinth to the old 
graveyard back of the church, with the wreaths 
they had brought. 

“ My people are buried here,” Hyacinth ex- 
plained, “ and I thought I’d like to put some 
holly on the graves this year.” 

Though now little used, the place was well 


144 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


cared for, and in summer a peaceful, pensive 
beauty hung about the time-stained urns and 
ivy-covered mounds, shaded by weeping willows 
and cypress trees ; but to-day it was bleak and 
melancholy. The evergreens looked black 
against the gray sky, the bare branches of the 
willows swayed drearily in the wind, and the 
ivy was dull and brown. 

Elizabeth shivered. How lonely it is,” she 
said, as they laid their wreaths on the graves, 
where the holly berries shone out, warm and 
red. 

Yes, and cold, too. We must hurry back,” 
Hyacinth replied. 

Whose grave is that under the cedar.?” Eliz- 
abeth pointed to a mound almost hidden. The 
low headstone was stained by the dripping of 
the rain from the tree’s branches. 

“ I don’t know,” Miss Gilderoy said. ** I have 
an impression that some relative of Aunt Gilde- 
roy’s is buried there. I must ask Dr. Milward. 
There are only the initials on the stone.” 

“ I wish we had some holly for it. Whoever 
it belongs to will feel left out,” Elizabeth said. 

Her companion smiled. “ I hope not. Per- 


HOLLY WREATHS 145 

haps we may find another wreath that is not 
needed in the church.” 

The matter passed entirely out of Hyacinth’s 
mind, however, in her task of directing the 
merry decorators. From the first moment these 
young people were all her loyal slaves, vying 
with each other in carrying out her wishes, and 
she forgot her burdens and was as light-hearted 
as any of them. 

Elizabeth quietly dropped a holly wreath be- 
hind one of the choir seats. If it were needed, 
she would bring it out, if not, she would have 
it for the unknown grave. 

The work went forward successfully. By and 
by Mr. Allan Whittredge and his sister. Miss 
Genevieve, came in. 

‘‘That is our greatest beauty,” Belle whis- 
pered. 

“ She is beautiful, but she isn’t sweet like 
Miss Hyacinth,” was Elizabeth’s verdict, as she 
watched the two talking together. 

Everything was done now, and the janitor had 
begun cleaning up. Her wreath was not needed, 
so with a word to Hyacinth, Elizabeth ran off 
with it. The afternoon was nearly over, and it 


146 ON HYACINTH HILL 

was beginning to snow as she hurried down the 
path, humming a little tune, looking neither to 
the right hand nor to the left. It was more 
dreary than ever now she was by herself, and 
she felt sorry she had not asked Belle or Billy 
to come with her. 

She crossed the grass and, stooping, pushed 
aside the branches of the tree, then, the better 
to arrange her wreath, she knelt. 

“ I am afraid the ground is very damp,” a 
voice close by remarked. 

Springing to her feet, Elizabeth faced the 
Gray Friar, looking bigger than ever in his 
heavy gray overcoat. 

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, with 
his friendly smile. 

“ I was a little frightened,” she acknowledged. 
“ It is so lonely here ; but I am very glad to 
see you. I was wondering if you were ever 
coming again. Where did you come from ” 

‘‘Just now, do you mean You passed me. 
I had stepped from the path to look at an old 
stone.” 

Elizabeth explained her errand. “ Of course,” 
she said, “ I don’t suppose whoever it is knows, 


HOLLY WREATHS 


147 


but you can’t be sure, and it seemed too bad to 
leave anybody out at Christmas. Don’t you 
think so ? ” 

“A good many people are left out, I’m 
afraid,” said the Gray Friar. 

This did not sound like the cheerful friend of 
past meetings. Elizabeth looked at him in sur- 
prise. “ Do you mean poor people } ” 

“Or homeless tramps, like me.” 

Elizabeth looked him up and down. “You 
are a funny sort of tramp,” she said. 

“There are many varieties.” 

“ Do you mean you haven’t any home } I should 
think you could have one if you wanted it.” 

“There are some things that can’t be had for 
the wanting.”’ 

“ I suppose you mean that it takes people to 
make a home,” Elizabeth said seriously. 

“ It is not worth looking so grave about. 
After all. I’m quite used to it.” The Gray Friar 
smiled reassuringly. “ How are you getting on 
here in Friendship ? ” 

“Very well, indeed. We like it, Billy and I. 
And we know the ‘ lady of the manor.’ You 
remember that was what you called her.?” 


148 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ Elizabeth — Betsy ! where are you ? ” It was 
Hyacinth’s voice, and then appeared Hyacinth 
herself, coming toward them, carrying her muff 
under one arm as she fastened her glove, her 
cheeks a glorious rose against her chinchilla 
collar. 

“Miss Hyacinth, here’s the Gray Friar!” 

Miss Gilderoy and the stranger bowed cere- 
moniously to each other. “ The weather has 
changed,” Hyacinth remarked with gravity. 

“Has it.?” said the Gray Friar. “It still 
seems pleasant.” 

“You are perhaps one of those fortunate per- 
sons who can perceive silver linings in clouds,” 
Hyacinth spoke lightly, taking Elizabeth’s hand. 
“Come, Betsy dear, it is growing late, we must 
say good night.” 

Elizabeth was reluctant to leave. She would 
have liked a long conversation with the Gray 
Friar. “ I hope you will come to Friendship 
soon again,” she said. 

“ I shall see you again in a few weeks. In 
the meantime I wish you a merry Christmas. 
Good-bye.” 

“ Merry Christmas, and good-bye,” Elizabeth 
echoed, as Hyacinth drew her away. 


HOLLY WREATHS 


149 


The Gray Friar watched them till they were 
out of sight, then he turned to the grave be- 
neath the cedar , and stooping broke off a bit of 
holly from Elizabeth’s wreath. 

“ I had a visit to-day from the person you 
call the Gray Friar,” said Dr. Milward at the 
dinner table, as calmly as if it were an every- 
day matter. 

“ Really, Cousin Charles } And did you find 
out his name ? ” cried Elizabeth, and William 
put down his knife and fork and looked inter- 
ested. 

Dr. Milward smiled. “ I believe his card is 
on the study table. He sent it in. His name 
is Whitney — Martin Whitney.” 

“ Martin Whitney,” Elizabeth repeated. 
“And who is he. Cousin Charles, and what 
does he do ” 

“ He is a doctor of pedagogics.” 

“ What a dreadful word! ” Elizabeth exclaimed. 

“ No wonder he wanted to keep it quiet,” 
William added. 

“Pedagogics,” the minister explained, “is the 
science of teaching.” 


CHAPTER FIFTEENTH 


IN HOLIDAY TIME 

F riendship was gay beyond anything 
that had been known for years. The visit 
of Rosalind Whittredge and the return of the 
college boys, on their first holiday, were made 
the occasion of much festivity. There was the 
Christmas party given by the Allan Whit- 
tredges in their spacious home, once known as 
the Gilpin place, to which everybody of any 
consequence was asked. There were teas, and 
luncheons and dinners besides, and skating 
parties, for the weather continued cold. 

The enjoyment of these affairs was by no 
means confined to the participants. It is doubt- 
ful if any one got more pleasure from the 
gayety than Mrs. Bailey in her chair by the 
window. She heard all about it from her niece. 
Miss Julia, who was clerk in Mr. Warren’s 
store, and thus in the way of getting the news. 


IN HOLIDAY TIME 


151 

Miss Martha Doane, too, who lived across the 
street, often ran in in the evening to exchange 
gossip with Miss Julia. 

Mrs. Bailey was as happy as a king, to use 
her own words, over her Christmas gift. The 
magic trunk of the fairy tale could hardly have 
brought more happiness to its owner. She 
proudly exhibited it to everybody who came in. 

“ Seems as if Td always wanted a trunk,” she 
said. “ I ain’t ever been anywheres — that is, to 
call it a journey, but I can sort of feel how it would 
be if I was packin’ up to go travellin’. It’s real 
handy to hold things, too, and my name’s on it. 
That poor young man up at Hyacinth Hill, he 
sent it to me, and he put the letters on it himself. 
That little girl at the minister’s, she told me how 
we was all going on a journey, sort of pretend like, 
you know, and the minister he read to me about 
what Jacob said to the king of Egypt, — that the 
years of his pilgrimage had been few and evil. 
Well, mine ain’t been so few or so evil. I have 
got a sight of comfort lookin’ on at things and 
makin’ out like I’m livin’ in it all.” 

Mrs. Bailey was not indifferent to the con- 
tents of her trunk; the warm flannels and other 


152 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


comforts were most acceptable, but they were 
secondary. 

“Aunt Nancy was feeling right despondent 
before Christmas,” Miss Julia said apologetically; 
“ but that trunk has cheered her up wonderful. 
It seems kind of foolish her wantin’ it, still I’m 
real glad she’s got it.” 

Miss Martha Doane listened to this with pursed- 
up lips. She made no remark, but later she 
confided to Mrs. Molesworth her opinion of 
people who hadn’t any more practical sense than 
to give a trunk to an old woman who was as 
good as bedridden. 

One thing that interested Mrs. Bailey was the 
visit of Senator Sayre. Fortunately for her he 
arrived in the daytime, so that she saw him pass, 
walking up from the station between his son and 
daughter. Elizabeth looked up with a smile 
and nod, and the senator lifted his hat. Mrs. 
Bailey glowed with pride whenever she thought 
of it. 

Dr. Milward gave a dinner in Mr. Sayre’s 
honor, on which occasion Miss Martha helped 
Miss Unadilla behind the scenes, so Mrs. Bailey 
heard how the table was set and what they had 


IN HOLIDAY TIME 


153 


to eat, and even something of the conversa- 
tion. 

Miss Julia was able to describe a number of 
the dresses worn at the Whittredge party. She 
had her information from Mrs. Pierce, who was 
there. According to this lady the general opin- 
ion seemed to be that so far as beauty and grace 
went. Miss Genevieve Whittredge had a rival in 
Miss Gilderoy. 

The Arden Foresters, who were the cause of 
much of the gayety, enjoyed themselves to the top 
of their bent. They were always together, and 
never appeared in public without their oak-leaf 
pins. Athough somewhat younger, the Sayres, 
as Belle’s friends, were included in the merry- 
making. 

Mr. Sayre came to Friendship for two days 
and remained a week. The simple home life 
at the minister’^. Miss Unadilla’s old-fashioned 
hospitality, and the wholesome gayety of the 
village carried him back to his boyhood. Here 
he found the opportunity to become really 
acquainted with the son and daughter who, 
while he had been absorbed in his profession, 
had grown almost out of his knowledge. Be- 


154 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


yond assuring himself of their health and hap- 
piness, he had had little to do with his younger 
children, and they regarded him chiefly as a 
court of last appeal, whose decisions stood, 
though made in the face of much opposition, 
as in the matter of their being sent to Friend- 
ship. 

The circumstances which had broken up their 
family life for the time had, in one sense, drawn 
them nearer to each other. Among strangers, 
however kind, ties of blood take on a new value. 
This boy and girl were a pair to be proud of, 
Mr. Sayre told himself. He had missed some- 
thing in not winning their friendship long ago. 

On their part William and Elizabeth were sur- 
prised to find their father so good a comrade, 
interested in all that interested them, and with a 
really intelligent appreciation for some of their 
favorite books. 

Perhaps no one thing pleased Mr. Sayre more 
than the cake Betsy made for him. When he 
was a boy, he said, he always thought his mother 
looked prettiest when, in a big white apron, she 
stirred up something good, and let him scrape 
the bowl. 


IN HOLIDAY TIME 


155 


“Why, father, you never told us about those 
times,” Elizabeth said. “Was that the grand- 
mother I am named for.? I’ll make you another 
cake, and let you scrape the bowl.” 

In this week Miss Una and Mr. Sayre became 
good friends, and his appreciation of what she 
was doing for the children brought a pretty glow 
of gratification to her face. Since Thomas was 
a little boy, more than thirty years ago. Miss 
Una had not enjoyed the Christmas holidays so 
much. She had actually been induced to hang 
up her stocking on Christmas eve, and Dr. Mil- 
ward hazarded a guess that she had written a 
letter to Santa Claus besides. This Miss Una 
denied indignantly, and then laughed at her own 
earnestness, which undoubtedly sprang from a 
consciousness of other childish performances. 

Among other events that week was Saturday 
afternoon at Hyacinth Hill. Elizabeth and Will- 
iam helped Hyacinth with her decorations, while 
Louis rolled his chair back and forth, criticising 
and making suggestions with as lively an interest 
as anybody. 

“ This would be a jolly place if only we had 
the money to keep it,” he remarked, when all 


156 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


was done, and the pretty old house fragrant with 
the odor of pine, and festive with holly and 
mistletoe. 

“With an L thrown out on the east side,” he 
went on, “it could be made large enough for a 
very respectable house party.” 

“ He is actually beginning to appreciate Hya- 
cinth Hill,” said his sister, patting his shoulder. 

A cloud swept over Louis’s face. “ It is all 
if — if — ” he sighed — “^we had the money, and 
if I were not a dead weight. I wonder what 
that fellow is doing with Aunt Gilderoy’s for- 
tune ” 

The tide of sociability being just then at its 
height, everybody came to Hyacinth Hill. The 
mingling of young and old on occasions like this 
was one of the pleasant features of Friendship. 

Belle brought her friends, and wherever that 
party appeared merriment was certain to prevail. 
Louis, who was hungry for college news and talk, 
enjoyed the boys greatly after the first moments 
of unhappy self-consciousness had passed. Jack 
Barton’s nonsense was a thing to brighten the 
deepest gloom, and the fun that went on around 
Louis’s chair knew scarcely a pause. Hyacinth, 


IN HOLIDAY TIME 


157 


busy with her other guests, could not keep her 
eyes from that side of the room. 

When other people were beginning to think of 
leaving, Mrs. Lawrence rustled in. “ I am so 
pleased,” she began, after greeting her hostess; 
“ I have a most delightful piece of news.” 
Everybody within hearing was included in her 
glance. 

“ Arrangements have been completed to-day for 
a course of lectures from Professor Whitney,” she 
continued. “ I am simply so full of it I must 
talk about it. Dr. Milward and Colonel Parton 
have been my allies, and Mrs. Graham, who 
realizes the advantage to her older pupils. I 
do hope we shall be supported. It is such an 
opportunity for Friendship. He is a perfectly 
delightful speaker.” 

“ Professor Whitney ? That is Rosalind’s 
friend,” some one said. 

“I do believe it is the Gray Friar,” exclaimed 
Elizabeth, who stood beside Hyacinth. 

“ Why do you think so .? ” Miss Gilderoy asked 
in surprise. 

Because that is his name. I forgot to tell you 
that he came to see Cousin Charles the very day 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


158 

we met him ; and don’t you remember, he said he 
would be back again soon.” 

“ I hope it is the Gray Friar,” Elizabeth re- 
marked, as she walked home between her father 
and brother, “for then I shall have a chance to 
ask him a lot of questions.” 

“ Are you sure he will wish to answer them ? ” 
her father asked, squeezing the hand he held. 

Elizabeth laughed. “ He doesn’t mind ques- 
tions. I want to know why he called himself a 
tramp.” 

“ And why he wanted to be a doctor of — what 
is that horrible word .? ” added Billy. 

“ Then I am to write to mother that you are 
happy in Friendship and do not wish to make 
any change at present,” Mr. Sayre said. “ She 
charged me to be sure you were happy.” 

“I’m happy — ever so happy. Aren’t you, 
Billy } ” said Elizabeth. 

“ I like it all right enough,” William replied, 
with a studied lack of enthusiasm. 


CHAPTER SIXTEENTH 


Louis’s secret 

“ T F I show you something, Elizabeth, you’ll 
X promise not to tell ? ” 

‘‘ Of course.” 

I tell you for two reasons ; first because you 
will be interested, and second because you can 
help me. Not another soul knows anything about 
it.” 

On Louis’s lap lay a large portfolio which he 
fingered nervously as he spoke. Elizabeth sat on 
a footstool with her arms folded on her knees, her 
eyes fixed upon him expectantly. 

You see,” he continued, I have been think- 
ing seriously about things. They may say what 
they please, I know I shall never walk.” 

But, Louis, if you just wouldn’t say that. The 
doctor thought you had improved, and Cousin 
Charles says the things you expect are very likely 
to happen.” 

159 


i6o 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ That is bosh, if you will excuse me for saying 
so. It is the unexpected that happens. At any 
rate, that is how I feel about it, and I have been 
trying to think what I could do so as not to go 
on being nothing but a burden. I have always 
thought it would be rather nice to be an illustra- 
tor, and I know I have some talent. I used to do 
the illustrations for our college paper, so I have 
decided to try my luck in a small way. I see so 
many nonsense rhymes and things of that sort in 
the magazines, and it seems to me I can do quite 
as well.” 

Louis opened the portfolio and Elizabeth 
drew nearer. In her opinion the drawings he 
displayed and the verses they were intended to 
adorn were marvels of cleverness. 

“ Louis, they are splendid ! ” she cried, clapping 
her hands. 

‘‘ If only the magazines will think so,” Louis 
said, much gratified. “ There are so many 
people doing this sort of thing.” 

“ But these are so delightfully funny, espe- 
cially the little girl who wouldn’t use a thimble. 
She looks like me.” Elizabeth studied it with 
her head on one side. 


LOUIS’S SECRET i6l 

“You inspired me. Indeed, in a way you are 
responsible for it all, Betsy. You stirred me up 
in the first place. I have been thinking, too, 
that almost everybody who does anything worth 
while does it in the face of some hindrance, 
and I don’t want to be a coward — although I 
am half the time,” Louis ended despondently. 

“Louis — indeed you are not.” 

“Yes, I am. I was horribly cross to Hyacinth 
this morning. Something reminded me of a 
man who used to sit in a wheeled chair near 
the station at home, and sell pencils and shoe- 
strings, and I began to wonder if that might 
not be what fate had in store for me.” 

“ But, Louis, he must have been very poor,” 
Elizabeth objected, finding it difficult to think 
of this handsome youth, with the costly rug 
over his knees, in such a situation. 

“I assure you we are poor, Betsy. There is 
no knowing what we may come to. I can see 
Hyacinth is worried about expenses, though she 
says nothing.” 

“ If only Madam Gilderoy had left you some 
money.” 

“ Hyacinth says she had a right to do as she 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


162 

pleased, and so she had, I suppose; but it was 
all Gilderoy money.” 

“ Did you ever see the man she left it to } ” 

“ Once, but I didn’t notice him much. He 
was a poor country boy, a cousin of my aunt’s, 
whom she picked up and educated, and then in 
some way he gained an influence over her, and 
made her think he would do great things with 
her money. I have no doubt he’ll manage to 
spend it.” 

“ I should think he would give up part of it 
to you,” said Elizabeth. 

“ You don’t think I’d accept it, do you, 
Betsy No, indeed. I don’t propose to live on 
that man’s charity,” said Louis. “ Aunt Gilderoy 
didn’t like me,” he continued. “ I went in too 
much for athletics and other things. She said 
I spent too much money, which was not her 
affair^ and I let her see I thought so. I might 
have hoodwinked her if I had chosen, but I am 
not a hypocrite.” 

Elizabeth was deeply sympathetic. Louis pos- 
sessed in a great degree the gift of drawing 
people to him, and in the guise of a martyr 
setting to work in the face of his own ill health 


LOUIS’S SECRET 


163 

and his aunt’s injustice he would have won a 
harder heart than hers. It was true, he was 
not a hypocrite. He had had a real awakening 
to the fact that he was still a responsible being; 
he honestly wished to be of some account. But 
with the recovery of his spirits the old love of 
admiration had returned, and he enjoyed the 
self he saw reflected in Betsy’s blue eyes. Her 
ardent appreciation was very pleasant. 

She eagerly agreed to mail the drawings and 
verses for him — a matter Louis was not willing 
to trust to Ranney and which he wished to 
keep secret from his sister. 

I am going to depend on you for ideas, too, 
Betsy. You are a clever little person,” Louis 
said, as he wrapped them up and explained 
about the return postage which must go inside. 

Greatly flattered by being chosen as confi- 
dante, Elizabeth carried off the package. She 
felt that her influence over Louis was a rather 
fine thing. She had overheard Dr. Milward 
refer to her laughingly as an instrument in the 
hands of Providence to arouse him, and it 
pleased her. Before she reached the post-office 
Louis had become in her imagination a success- 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


164 

ful illustrator, and was telling his friends, “ I 
owe it all to Elizabeth.” 

She was so absorbed she forgot to look up at 
Mrs. Bailey’s Window, greatly to the old lady’s 
disappointment, for one of her amusements was 
keeping count of the number of bows she received 
in the course of a day. 

At the post-office the weighing of the package 
demanded her attention, the enclosing of the 
stamps and the tying it up securely took a long 
time. Elizabeth was surprised to find it almost 
dark when she was on the street again. She did 
not feel at all comfortable. Miss Una would not 
like it, and besides she had promised to be at 
home long before this. It was a great relief to 
come suddenly upon William as she turned a 
corner. He and Belle Barton were talking to- 
gether in front of the drug store. 

“Why, Elizabeth Sayre, I have been looking 
everywhere for you. Where have you been ? ” 

Betsy rebelled against her brother’s tone of 
authority. She pursed up her lips. “ Never 
mind,” she said. 

“Another time I shall not trouble myself to 
look for you,” cried William, indignantly. 


LOUIS’S SECRET 


165 

“ I didn’t ask you to. I had something to 
attend to, and it took longer than I thought it 
would, but I can take care of myself.” 

“ We’ll see what father says about your running 
around town alone at night.” 

“ Don’t quarrel, children,” Belle admonished 
them gayly. “ Come into the drug store with 
me, then we can walk out together. I believe I 
have forgotten what I came for,” she added, as 
they entered the shop. ** It is something to put 
on father’s chest. He has a dreadful cold.” 

‘‘I wonder if it is what Miss Una used,” said 
Elizabeth. “ Don’t you remember, Billy ? — such 
a funny name. It made me think of ‘ Flow gently, 
sweet Afton.’ ” 

Belle laughed, then frowned thoughtfully. 
‘"Flow,” she repeated, “it does seem to sug- 
gest it. Mr. Brown, do you know of anything 
that sounds like ‘ Flow gently, sweet Afton ’ } 
It is for father’s chest.” 

The druggest considered. “For external ap- 
plication, you S3,y? There is something that is 
used a good deal of late, called antiphlogis- 
tine.” 

“ That’s it,” cried Belle. “ I shall tell father your 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


l66 

name for it, Betsy. That is his favorite tune,” 
she added, as the druggist went off laughing. 

For the rest of the way home, after they left 
Belle at her gate, William preserved a dignified 
silence, making no response to Elizabeth’s at- 
tempts at conversation. 

“ I don’t see what makes you so disagreeable, 
Billy,” she said at last. “ I honestly had some- 
thing to do that was important. If you knew, 
you would think so, too.” 

No reply. 

A sudden recollection came to her. ‘‘There, I 
forgot all about our history lesson, but I guess 
we’ll have time before dinner.” 

There was not time, however, it turned out, and 
instead of a delightful evening with Miss Unadilla 
over “The Talisman,” the two hours before bed- 
time had to be given to lessons. It was very pro- 
voking, but Elizabeth did not think she ought to 
be blamed for it. To be sure, she had forgotten 
her promise to be at home by four o’clock, but 
then she had been helping Louis. Billy would 
have to get over his ill humor. 


CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH 


A QUESTION OF TIME 

M atters were not going well with Eliz- 
abeth. It seemed to her there was 
something wrong with the world; certainly there 
was not time enough. 

‘‘Haven’t you all the time there is.?” Dr. 
Milward asked, when she excused herself for 
not having her Latin lesson with this very old 
plea. 

“Not for Latin, Cousin Charles,” she said, 
laughing rather shamefacedly. 

“ Perhaps you find there are more important 
things than an education.” 

Elizabeth twisted her shoulders uneasily. The 
minister’s calm gaze was disconcerting. 

“You had time to go up to Hyacinth Hill 
yesterday,” William volunteered, quite super- 
fluously. 

“I took Rags to Louis. He wanted to draw 
167 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


l68 


him, and he was so funny I forgot to look at 
the clock.” Rags was Belle’s Skye terrier. ‘‘ I 
thought it was right to help Louis,” she added 
lamely. 

‘‘A case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, I see,” 
was Dr. Milward’s comment. 

It made Elizabeth unhappy to be found fault 
with, all the more because of the complacent 
satisfaction she had been feeling in sharing 
Louis’s secret and helping him. Evidently Cousin 
Charles was not impressed with the importance 
of taking Rags to Hyacinth Hill, but then he 
did not know that Rags was to figure in certain 
drawings which perhaps would make him famous 
one of these days. Well, she would know her 
lessons to-morrow if she had to sit up till mid- 
night. 

After lunch she shut herself in her room, safe 
from all distractions, and set to work. Half an 
hour later Billy looked in. 

“ Say, Betsy, can’t you read some } ” 

“ No, indeed, I wish I could,” was her reply, 
made without lifting her eyes. 

William came in and lounged at the window. 
A fine rain was falling, freezing as it fell, and 


A QUESTION OF TIME 


169 


the view of the mill stream winding through 
the meadows, so charming in summer, was 
dreary enough to-day. 

“ How long is it going to take you ? ” he 
asked at length. 

“ Oh, Billy, don’t bother. You know how Cousin 
Charles spoke to me.” 

“You always have plenty of time to give to 
Louis Gilderoy, I notice,” William exclaimed. 

“Why, Billy, that is not so. You don’t under- 
stand. Can’t Miss Una read to you } ” 

“You know very well she is at the McLeans’. 
But don’t let it worry you,” with which polite 
sarcasm William retired. 

“ I don’t see what makes Billy so disagreeable,” 
Elizabeth said to herself. “ I am sorry for him, 
but I can’t read to him when I have to study.” 

It did occur to her that if she had not let her- 
self get so behindhand with everything she might 
have had time for the usual reading; however, 
she put the thought aside with the excuse that she 
couldn’t help it. 

She did not think of William again till she 
went down to the dinner-table, where from his 
silence she concluded he was still vexed with her. 


I/O 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Miss Una inquired if he were not feeling well — a 
question he seemed inclined to resent a little, but 
he did not refuse her offer to read aloud. 

Elizabeth felt reluctant to go back to her 
studies, the sitting room was so cheerful. She 
lingered at the door a moment while Miss Una, 
the lamplight falling prettily on her silver hair, 
adjusted her glasses and opened her book. Billy 
lay stretched on the sofa with a high-backed chair 
before him to shield his eyes. 

The next morning the truth could no longer 
be concealed. There was something more than 
usually wrong with those eyes. With his head 
on his arms William answered Miss Una’s ques- 
tions meekly, while Elizabeth stood by, an anxious 
listener. 

There wasn’t anything to do yesterday. It was 
so stupid. He had just turned the leaves of a 
book that lay on the sitting-room table, — a detec- 
tive story that came in a case from the Book- 
lover’s. He had not meant to read it, but he 
was interested before he knew it and forgot 
about his eyes for ever so long. This was the 
confession, made in muffled tones. 

Miss Unadilla looked at Elizabeth, who replied 


A QUESTION OF TIME 


171 


to the question in her eyes. “ I was so busy yes- 
terday, I just had to study.” Then she added, 
“ Oh, Billy, I am so sorry. I wish you hadn’t.” 

“ Such a silly book, too. I don’t know how I 
came to put it on the list.” Miss Una sighed, as 
much as to say if Billy were going to ruin his 
eyes, it was a pity not to do it in a better cause. 

This was an unhappy day. William was too 
miserable either to be scolded or entertained. 
The danger of losing his eyesight altogether had 
been strongly impressed upon him by the oculist, 
and fear now exaggerated the pain he suffered. 
Elizabeth, conscience-smitten, was ready to devote 
herself to him, but there was nothing she could do. 

As if this were not trouble enough. Miss Una- 
dilla called her aside for a serious talk. Some- 
thing was wrong, she said. Elizabeth was 
neglecting her duties, she did not keep her room 
in order, and then Miss Una produced a pretty 
light dress, worn during the holidays, which she 
had found tossed carelessly on a shelf, a mass of 
wrinkles. 

“ I do put things in order, but they won’t stay,” 
the culprit cried despairingly, an excuse Miss Una 
was too hard-hearted to accept. 


72 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Elizabeth cried herself to sleep that night, still 
unable to see exactly what the trouble was. 

In the morning Miss Una and William left on 
the early train for Baltimore to consult the ocu- 
list, and later Dr. Milward was called to a neigh- 
boring town to conduct a funeral service, so it 
happened that the Gray Friar found only a dole- 
ful little girl in the sitting room when he walked 
in that afternoon. 

Elizabeth had declined Belle’s invitation to 
walk up to Hyacinth Hill, and was sitting with 
her head on her hand in unhappy idleness. 

“All alone ” asked the Gray Friar, smiling at 
the pensive face, which he had never before seen 
anything but merry. He brought in with him a 
breath of frosty air and a general impression of 
helpfulness and good cheer. 

“Yes,” Elizabeth answered, and going on to 
explain, her eyes suddenly filled, and she hid her 
face in the sofa pillow. 

“Come,” said the Gray Friar, “there is a dis- 
covery I made a long time ago, — it is that there 
isn’t any trouble which can’t be helped a little by 
a look at the sky. This is just the day for a walk. 
Let’s go somewhere and talk it over as we go.” 


A QUESTION OF TIME 


73 


His very tone helped. Reluctantly she yielded. 

The day was cold with a crisp snow under 
foot, and the sky a mass of soft gray clouds, 
so filmy their silver lining shone through. 
By the time they reached Main Street and 
turned in the direction of Red Hill, Eliza- 
beth’s cheeks had grown rosy and her heart 
less heavy. 

Her companion strode along by her side, his 
hands in the pockets of his comfortable gray 
coat. From the beginning he had seemed like 
an old friend, and now Elizabeth forgot that 
this was the first time she had seen him since 
she had learned his name. An encouraging 
“Well” brought out the whole story, even to 
Miss Una’s reproof. 

“ I am all mixed about it,” she said. “ I 
thought it was right to help Louis, but that 
made me get behind with my lessons, and when 
I tried to make it up, I couldn’t read to Billy, 
so he went and hurt his eyes, and now perhaps 
he’ll go blind. O dear! Cousin Charles said I 
was robbing Peter to pay Paul.” 

“I see,” said the Gray Friar; “it all came 
from mistaking your path. Every now and 


174 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


then we come to a place where the road 
branches, where it is difficult to decide which 
way to take. It was natural and right for you 
to wish to help your friend, but it seems you 
gave him more time than was yours to give. 
Lessons and your duty to William came first. 
Don’t you think so ? And if you will pardon 
a friend who has made the same mistake, 
wasn’t there some selfishness in it ? Being 
with Louis was perhaps more interesting than 
lessons.” 

Elizabeth nodded meekly. 

“ But you mustn’t despair,” the Gray Friar went 
on. “Take courage and learn wisdom by your 
mistakes. It is the only way, and if we do not 
forget what we are seeking, all will come right 
in the end.” 

“ I often think about the city, — ‘ some fair 
city,’ you know,” Elizabeth said, looking up 
with an earnest light in her eyes. “ Cousin 
Charles read us part of the poem about the 
death of King Arthur,” she added. 

“ Then perhaps you remember what he said 
about the island-valley of Avilion, where he 
was going ? 


A QUESTION OF TIME 


175 


‘ Where falls not hail or rain or any snow, 

Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns. 

And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.’ 

If we travel bravely and well, we shall surely 
come to our own.” 

“ I am afraid I shall be a long time finding 
my city, at this rate,” Elizabeth said pensively. 

“Some day, quite unexpectedly, you will see 
the gleam of its spires in the distance.” 

“Have you ever seen yours.?” Elizabeth 
asked quickly. 

The Gray Friar smiled. “Just a glimpse, 
perhaps,” he said. 

When at the top of the hill they turned, 
they faced a golden sunset that flooded the wintry 
world with a heavenly radiance. They smiled at 
each other. “ Let’s take it as a prophecy of 
things to come,” the Gray Friar suggested. 

They walked on in happy silence, with a 
glow in their hearts like the glow on their faces. 
When they reached the bottom of the hill, Eliza- 
beth said, “ I am coming to your lecture to- 
morrow.” 

“ Are you interested in moral education .? ” 
asked the Gray Friar. 


1/6 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ Is that what you are going to talk about ? ” 

“That is my subject in general.” 

Elizabeth laughed. “ I think Fll try it,” she 
said. 

As is so often the case, the day which began 
in gloom ended in brightness. They found 
Miss Una and William at home before them, 
and with good news. The doctor had pro- 
nounced the injured eye much improved, in 
spite of the strain it had been subjected to. 
The Gray Friar stayed to dinner and made him- 
self very agreeable. Afterward there was a 
meeting of some gentlemen in Dr. Milward’s 
study. 

“ I was selfish, Billy,” Elizabeth said as they 
went upstairs together. “The Gray Friar made 
me see it. What Louis was doing was so 
interesting I neglected my lessons and you. 
Of course I care a great deal more for you 
than I do for Louis, because you are my 
brother.” 

“Do you really, Betsy.? I began to think 
you didn’t.” William was in a softened mood 
to-night. 

“ Indeed, indeed I do. And I never could 


A QUESTION OF TIME 177 

have forgiven myself if anything had happened 
to your eyes.” 

“ I was pretty mad at you, but still that wasn’t 
any excuse for hurting my eyes over that silly 
book,” William acknowledged. 

“ I suppose you got out of the right path, too. 
The Gray Friar says it is easy to make mistakes 
sometimes. That is what I did.” 

“ Are you and he still talking about paths ? ” 
said William. 


CHAPTER EIGHTEENTH 


THE LECTURER 


FTER Professor Whitney’s first lecture 



X Jl those especially interested in the enter- 
prise drew a breath of relief. Hereafter there 
need be no anxiety concerning the size of his 
audiences. 

Friendship was not a lecture town. Smaller 
places near by had two or three university ex- 
tension courses during a winter, while Friend- 
ship complacently ignored its opportunities and 
had none. But this time Mrs. Lawrence’s efforts 
were crowned with success. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the 
lecturer’s views were accepted without question. 
By no means. Colonel Parton, Dr. Milward, 
and Dr. Pierce walked up street together dis- 
cussing it warmly. 

“I don’t deny he has an interesting way of 
putting things, and I’m going to hear him 


THE LECTURER 1 79 

again ; but some of his ideas strike me as bosh,” 
said the colonel. 

“ Instead of putting away childish things, it 
seems to me Professor Whitney would have us 
hold on to them,” added Dr. Pierce. 

“Yet he is not the first who would set a 
child in the midst,” suggested Dr. Milward. 

“ One must doubt if myths and fairy tales con- 
stitute the mental food that makes great men,” 
Dr. Pierce continued. “ Certainly the great men 
of the past had a different diet.” 

“The great men find their own food, I sus- 
pect. It is the average person for whom Pro- 
fessor Whitney is enlisted, if I understand. I 
don’t myself indorse all his ideas ; but the old 
order changes, we can’t overlook that,” Dr. Mil- 
ward replied. 

“ Working according to nature may be all 
very well, but it is a radical change from the 
methods in vogue when I was a boy. It was 
all against nature then. I rather agree with 
Dr. Pierce. It sounds too easy to develop 
good, tough mental muscle and bone,” said the 
colonel. 

“ I never should have gone if Mrs. Parton 


i8o 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


hadn’t sent me a ticket,” said Miss Martha 
Doane, joining Miss Unadilla on her way home. 
“ I as good as told Mrs. Lawrence I wouldn’t 
go. She makes me tired.” 

“ Mrs. Lawrence means well,” Miss Una re- 
plied, smiling. “Well, how did you like it.?” 

“To tell you the truth, I liked it. It was 
a real treat. He is a fine speaker. I had 
my mind so full of the sitting-room curtains 
that Cinthy tore so in the wash I didn’t know 
as I’d hear a word, but they went clean out of 
my head before he had said ten sentences. I 
hear Professor Whitney is very rich and just 
lectures for charity. Is that so.?” 

“ I had not heard it. I think he is to be paid 
for these lectures,” Miss Una replied. 

“There’s a lot of truth in what he said about 
people not being taught to use their hands these 
days. Well, I’m going in here to ask for Dr. 
Grant.” Miss Martha paused with her hand on 
the gate. “ He had a stroke yesterday, and I 
rather guess he’ll not go out again with his 
hat on.” 

Mrs. Parton overtook Miss Unadilla a few 
moments later. “ I have been wondering what 


THE LECTURER 


l8l 


Miss Martha thought about the lecture. Belle 
couldn’t go, so I sent the ticket over to her,” 
she said. 

“ She seemed very much pleased, as every- 
body was,” Miss Una answered. 

“ I like him so much,” Mrs. Barton continued, 
“ that I don’t care what he says. I am not clever 
enough to criticise. I haven’t the least doubt 
the colonel and Dr. Milward are pulling his 
theories to pieces ; but to me he was very ‘ con- 
vincing’ — isn’t that the proper word.?” 

“ It sounds well,” Miss Una said, laughing. 

“ If I had my boys to bring up again, they 
should learn to do housework and their mend- 
ing. I told the colonel this morning they were 
just a set of kings, he and the boys, created to 
be waited on. — Good afternoon. Hyacinth. What 
did you think of the lecture .? ” as Miss Gilderoy 
crossed the street and joined them. 

“Your salutation has almost the familiar sound 
of ^ Have you used Pear’s soap .? ’ ” said the young 
lady. “ I was interested, very much. He is 'a 
magnetic speaker, and I suppose what he said 
is all true.” 

“Yes; hasn’t he a pleasant face when he 


i 82 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


talks ? At first I thought him stern-looking. I 
don’t want to lose such good company, won’t 
you come in for a while ? ” Mrs. Parton held her 
gate hospitably open. 

Miss Una and Hyacinth declined the invitation • 
and walked on together. 

“ Do you know anything about Professor Whit- 
ney — where he is from.?” Hyacinth looked at 
Miss Una intently as she asked the question. 

“ I really know nothing about him except that 
he was connected with the Warren Fielding Uni- 
versity recently^ He stayed with us last night ; 
but before dinner the children monopolized him, 
and afterward there was a meeting of gentlemen 
in Cousin Charles’s study. I don’t know what 
for. He is very pleasant. I should like to 
have you know him. Hyacinth.” 

“ I have had two encounters with him in the 
guise of Betsy’s Gray Friar,” Hyacinth said, 
smiling. 

She walked up the hill, thinking of the lec- 
turer rather than the lecture. There was no 
doubt in her mind that he was her aunt’s heir. 
She had thought so from the first. She had hesi- 
tated whether or not to attend the lecture, but 


THE LECTURER 


183 

it seemed best to go, and now she was glad she 
had gone. No prejudice could blind her to the 
truth that here was a man of learning and spirit- 
ual insight, and seeing this she saw her aunt’s 
will in a new light. 

Madam Gilderoy, though eccentric, had not 
lacked common sense. If this was the man she 
had educated, she might well have felt proud of 
the result, and have been willing to intrust to 
him the carrying out of any plans she might 
have had. More than ever Hyacinth wondered 
what these plans could have been. 

Louis had given her the impression of an ordi- 
nary, even an ill-bred, man. As she thought of 
this Hyacinth recalled her own curt note declin- 
ing an interview. There was something about 
that request of his she did not understand, but 
she half wished now that she had consented to 
see him. 

He had recognized her that day at the stile, 
it seemed, though how she could not guess. 
Why had he asked if Hyacinth Hill was for 
sale.? Did he wish to acquire all the Gilderoy 
property.? The thought brought a flush to her 
face, which faded as she reflected that the day 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


184 

might come soon when she would be glad to 
sell it to any purchaser. 

“Unless you feel otherwise about it, I should 
prefer not to have the matter mentioned at 
present. Of course it must gradually come out, 
but just now there is no need of spreading it 
abroad.” 

“ Certainly, Martin, I shall say nothing,” Dr. 
Milward replied ; “ and Miss McLean is a 

pretty safe person,” he added, with a smile in 
Miss Una’s direction. 

“I’ll try to keep it,” Miss Una said, “but I 
am so surprised. I did not dream that Betsy’s 
Gray Friar and Madam Gilderoy’s heir would 
turn out to be the same person. We had very 
different ideas on the subject.” 

“You can see my position is in some respects 
an awkward one,” Professor Whitney said. 
“ Madam Gilderoy’s will took me completely by 
surprise; and while it makes possible the fulfil- 
ment of one of my air-castles, it entails much 
responsibility and some disappointment. It is 
perfectly natural that her nephew and niece 
should, under the circumstances, feel hardly that 


THE LECTURER 


185 


SO much money belonging to their family should 
be bestowed elsewhere. I only resent the feel- 
ing the boy seemed to have, that I was account- 
able for it through my influence over Madam 
Gilderoy. I think I met her in all about four 
times, and exchanged as many letters. I deeply 
regret that she did not divide her estate.” 

Miss Una nodded. “ It would have been 
more comfortable, and easier for Hyacinth, too.” 

“ I wrote to Miss Gilderoy in accordance with 
her aunt’s wish, to ask if I might explain the 
plans Madam Gilderoy had made, but she de- 
clined to see me. It is unfortunate in view of 
her hostility that those plans must be carried 
out here in Friendship.” , 

“Hostility is too strong a word. I think Hya- 
cinth does not understand. She will be won 
over in the end. In the meantime let things 
work out in their way,” said the minister. 

“ I have found that a great deal of our trouble 
comes from impatience. We can’t wait to let 
things unfold naturally,” Miss Una said, adding 
hastily, “Not that I think you are impatient. 
It was only that, as William tells Elizabeth 
sometimes, it seemed a good place for a moral.” 


ON HYACmra HILL 


1 86 

Professor Whitney smiled. “ An excellent 
place,” he said; “I am afraid I am not as pa- 
tient as I might be.” 

“‘They that wait for Jehovah shall renew 
their strength,’ ” Dr. Milward quoted. 


CHAPTER NINETEENTH 


A BIT OF SUCCESS 

‘‘ X LIKED your lecture. I did not understand 

A it all, but the part about stories was very 
interesting. Billy thought so too.” Elizabeth 
smoothed and carefully folded a blue ribbon as 
she spoke. It was Saturday morning, and true 
to her resolution she had brought her ribbon box 
down to the sitting room to be put in order while 
Pearl was sweeping upstairs. 

The Gray Friar had dropped in to say good-bye, 
and was watching her with an amused expression 
in his eyes. 

“ Thank you. I am glad you found something 
in it. The next time I come I want to have a 
talk with you on educational matters.” 

Elizabeth laughed. “ That sounds like a joke,” 
she said. 

“ It is not, I assure you. Is it possible one girl 
can wear so many ribbons ? ” he added. 

187 


i88 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ Not all at once, but you want them to match, you 
know. You ought to be glad you don’t have to 
wear them, it is such a nuisance to keep them in 
order.” Elizabeth sighed. 

“ How about cravats ” asked the Gray Friar. 

“They aren’t nearly so much trouble. Billy 
hangs his on the back of a chair and Miss Una 
puts them away.” 

“ Fortunate Billy. But, after all, the outside 
order is a small part of it. Aren’t we always hav- 
ing to readjust our inner life.^ We collect our 
thoughts, smooth out our ruffled serenity, rearrange 
our ideas, and change our minds generally.” 

“ Why, so we do,” said Elizabeth. “ I had not 
thought of that.” 

“ And a well-ordered inner life makes a well- 
ordered outer life,” the Gray Friar continued. 

Betsy regarded him earnestly. “ I am going to 
try to keep in the right path after this,” she said. 
“You helped me smooth things out.” 

“ It is very pleasant to have you say so.” 

“ I am glad you are coming to lecture again. 
Billy and I used to wonder what you were. At 
first I thought you must be a preacher, and he 
said you were a travelling man.” 


A BIT OF SUCCESS 


189 


“ And you find I am both,” the Gray Friar said, 
smiling. “You know I told you I was a sort of 
tramp. I have been lecturing up and down the 
road this winter.” 

“ Do you remember the day when I sat on the 
bridge and you came by and told me you had 
seen the lady of the manor ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ It seems a good while ago, doesn’t it ? ” 
Betsy looked meditative. “ That afternoon I went 
up to Hyacinth Hill and saw Miss Hyacinth for 
the first time. I told her about your giving me half 
of the apple, and telling me the lady of the manor 
gave it to you.” 

“You did.?” 

“Yes, and she said you were a benevolent gen- 
tleman.” Betsy’s eyes were mischievous. 

“ I fear she will not keep her good opinion of 
me long.” 

“ Oh, yes, she will, I am sure. She liked your 
lecture. Miss Una said so.” 

Just after the Gray Friar left, Billy came in. 
“ Say, Betsy, I met Miss Hyacinth down town, 
and she wanted to know what had become of you. 
She said to tell you Louis had some news for you.” 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


190 

Elizabeth upset her ribbon box in her excite- 
ment. “ Oh, good ! It must be something nice. 
Can’t you go up there with me this afternoon .? ” 

William, however, had promised to help Harry 
Parton, one of Belle’s younger brothers, with an 
engine he was constructing. I’ll come for you, 
though,” he said, not without some curiosity to 
learn the secret, if this were it. 

“ Well, Betsy, I began to think I was never to 
see you again,” was Louis’s greeting. “ Perhaps 
you don’t care to hear my news.” 

“ Oh, Louis, you know I do. I have been hav- 
ing a dreadful time. I didn’t know my lessons, 
and I wasn’t good to Billy, and he hurt his eyes,” 
Elizabeth burst out in breathless confession. 

“You are an awful sinner, no doubt; but just 
look at this ! ” 

Hyacinth stood beside her brother, smiling. 
“ So you were in the secret,” she said. 

“Yes, Betsy, the Journal has taken ‘The Seam- 
stress ’ ; isn’t that great .? Here is the letter. They 
wish to see more of my work, but of course the 
check is the best part.” Louis waved aloft a 
small piece of paper. 

“ He is so proud of it he won’t let me have 





‘ LOUIS WAVED ALOFT A SMALL PIECE OF PAPER.” 





^ ^:: . ‘.'- :"_ .I- 





A BIT OF SUCCESS 


I9I 

it cashed for him,” his sister said, patting his 
shoulder. 

“ It is too lovely for anything ! Louis, I am so 
glad, and so proud that I mailed it,” Elizabeth 
cried, clapping her hands. 

‘‘ Of course I know it is only a small thing. I 
may fall down next time, but it makes me feel 
as if I could perhaps do something. I have no 
end of ideas.” Louis’s face was flushed with 
happy excitement. 

“ It isn’t small, it is big, and we are as proud 
of you as we can be. Aren’t we. Miss Hyacinth ? 
You see, Louis, your path is leading somewhere, 
after all. I do wish you knew the Gray Friar.” 

“I think I like your sermons best, Betsy,” 
Louis said, laughing. “At any rate, as you say, 
I am glad our paths crossed this winter.” 

On more than one occasion Elizabeth had 
enlarged upon her favorite fancy, and it had per- 
haps impressed him more than he cared to own. 
“ Hyacinth is making money, too,” he said. “She 
has sold some violets.” 

Hyacinth laughed. “ My violets are doing 
beautifully, but I hardly expect to make a fortune 
with them. I leave that to my clever brother.” 


192 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Life was indeed a see-saw affair, she thought, 
as she left Elizabeth and Louis in merry discus- 
sion over his drawings, trying to decide what he 
should send next. To-day a bit of success had 
brightened the world for her brother. What a 
power to cheer or depress lay in small things ! 
She would make the most of the gleam of sun- 
shine. Was not Louis improving.? Did it not 
seem that she had done wisely in coming to Hya- 
cinth Hill.? If she had to part with the place 
later on, at least they had had this winter. 

When she returned to the sitting room. Belle 
Barton and William had arrived, and Louis was 
receiving congratulations again. 

“ So this is the secret Betsy wouldn’t tell us 
the night we met her coming from the post- 
office,” William said. 

“ And you were so cross about it,” Belle added. 

“I cross.? Never!” 

‘‘You are spoiled, that is what you are,” Belle 
insisted severely. “ I should never think of wait- 
ing on Jack as Betsy does on you.” 

“We are in the minority, Billy. You may as 
well hold your peace,” said Louis. 

“What are you going to do when you make 
your fortune, Louis .? ” Belle asked. 


A BIT OF SUCCESS 


193 


“ I’ll invite you all to visit me,” he answered 
gayly. 

“ Here ? ” inquired Elizabeth. 

“ Wherever I am. I mean to have several 
homes, but I think we will hold on to this — won’t 
we. Hyacinth.? because it belongs in the family, 
and because I met Betsy here.” Louis smiled 
mischievously at Elizabeth. 

How touching ! ” cried Belle. 

“ I shall have a yacht, of course, and we’ll 
cruise about and have a grand time. I am not 
going to shut myself up. I am going to be 
popular in spite of everything.” 

“ Does any one want tea .? ” Hyacinth asked. 

“Why, yes; we must drink to the author’s 
health,” said Billy. 

So presently Ranney appeared with an old 
tray of inlaid satinwood on which were the tea 
things; odd little cups without handles and the 
didactic tea-pot, as Louis called it. 

“ The decorator of this tea-pot believed in 
combining pleasure and instruction,” said Belle. 
“ He put a garden scene below the mottoes.” 

“It is a tea-pot after Betsy’s own heart,” said 
Louis. 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


194 

“ Do I preach much, Miss Hyacinth ? ” cried 
Elizabeth. 

“ Not half so much as he needs, dear,” Hya- 
cinth replied. 

“ Belle can’t go yachting with us,” said Billy. 
“ She is going to be a doctor.” 

“ I’d like to know if a doctor can’t have a 
holiday now and then ? ” Belle said indignantly. 

Belle a doctor } nonsense ! ” Louis exclaimed. 

I don’t see why,” cried the young lady, 
warmly. “ I assure you I am going to do some- 
thing worth while.” 

“Oh, maybe you’ll begin, but first thing you 
know you’ll get married.” 

“ I’ll not at all. How absurd you are ! Every- 
body doesn’t have to be married,” said Belle. 

“You’d think so from books,” put in Billy. 
“ Now there are Cooper’s novels spoiled by a 
lot of silly love.” 

“ Oh, Billy,” laughed Hyacinth, “ you’ll be 
changing your mind one of these days.” 

“ I don’t like sentimental things,” Billy declared 
stoutly, “like the lily maid, who died and went 
floating down the river because Launcelot 
wouldn’t love her. Elizabeth’s teacher read it 


A BIT OF SUCCESS 195 

to the class last winter, and they thought it was 
great.” His scorn was tremendous. 

“Why, no, I didn’t exactly, Billy. It is a 
beautiful poem, isn’t it. Miss Hyacinth But I 
don’t think she had much pride,” said Elizabeth. 

Hyacinth was still laughing. “ I suppose 
Elaine belonged to a simpler age than ours, 
when people did not feel obliged to hide their 
feelings ; but I confess a lack of sympathy for 
her.” 

The merry talk went on till the darkness warned 
them it was time to go. 

“Some one is buying up land around here. 
Miss Hyacinth,” Belle said as she fastened her 
coat. “ Charlotte Ellis told me her father had 
sold several acres across the road. You’d better 
be inquiring what they are going to do with it. 
Charlotte thought it was for some sort of institu- 
tion.” 

“ I don’t know what good inquiring would do. 
I couldn’t help it,” Hyacinth answered. “If it 
is anything disagreeable, I shall have to move 
away.” 


CHAPTER TWENTIETH 


THE GRAY FRIAR AGAIN 

“ T WISH to learn to be economical, and ten 

A eggs sounds extravagant.” Miss Gilderoy 
spoke without lifting her eyes from the cook- 
book which lay open before her on Dr. Mil- 
ward’s study table. 

When a silence of some few seconds followed 
the opening of the door, she looked up and met 
the glance of the Gray Friar. 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said. ** I did not 
know there was any one here. Elizabeth let me 
in.” 

“I should ask yours for greeting you with 
such a commonplace remark.” Miss Gilderoy’s 
manner did not show the annoyance she felt at 
this encounter. 

“ It depends upon how it is treated whether 
a subject is commonplace. Economy and eggs, 
when intelligently considered, are both interesting 
and good.” 


196 


THE GRAY FRIAR AGAIN 


197 


' “I confess to finding little that is interesting 
in the first. But perhaps I haven’t the intelli- 
gence,” Miss Gilderoy went on hastily, as it 
occurred to her she did not care to discuss econ- 
omy with Professor Whitney. Across the back 
of the hand that lay on the cook-book was the 
red mark of a burn ; she appeared to study it 
critically as she added, “My cook is on the 
sick list at present, and I am but a poor sub- 
stitute. Won’t you sit down .? Miss Unadilla 
will be in presently. Dr. Milward is out of 
town.” 

The Gray Friar sat down in the minister’s 
chair; his eyes, too, were on the scar. “Cook- 
ing is an important science, and should be 
taught in all the schools,” he remarked. 

“ Do you cook yourself } I mean, do you 
cook ^ ” Miss Gilderoy looked at her hand 
again, determined not to smile. 

“ I am too old a camper not to know how to 
cook. I have on occasion cooked myself, par- 
tially, in the process of cooking something 
else.” He spoke gravely. 

The conversation flagged. It was strange. 
Hyacinth thought, to be sitting there talking 


198 ON HYACINTH HILL 

with a man she had declined to meet; to be 
wondering if he knew that she knew who 
he was, and to be unable to explain that on 
rather slight grounds she had concluded he was 
probably not a gentleman. Would Miss Una 
never come? She would have liked to speak of 
his lectures, to ask questions, if he had been 
any one else. 

“Why, Miss Hyacinth, I didn’t know you 
were here ! ” Elizabeth exclaimed. 

Hyacinth could have hugged her for appear- 
ing before the silence became embarrassing. 
“Yes, I came to talk domestic economy with Miss 
Una, but she has deserted me. Louis doesn’t like 
my cooking and sighs for Aunt Hilda.” 

“It is too bad she is sick,” said Elizabeth, 
sitting down on an ottoman and looking first at 
Hyacinth and then at Professor Whitney. 

“The Gray Friar — ” she began, then hesi- 
tated. 

“I like the title, go on,” he said. 

She laughed. “Well, the Gray Friar has the 
most interesting way of teaching cooking at his 
school. It would be fun, and so would all the 
other things. I should not know how to choose.” 


THE GRAY FRIAR AGAIN 


199 

“ I did not know you had a school,” Miss 
Gilderoy looked at the Gray Friar. 

“It is hardly more than a castle in Spain as 
yet,” he replied. 

“He has told me a good deal about it,” 
Elizabeth continued. “You make things out of 
wood, for instance, — useful things and beautiful 
things too, — what you can, and what you like ; 
and you read stories about trees, and learn 
how they grow and their names. It is to be in 
the country, so you can do that out of doors. 
I wish I could go to his school.” 

“ You will be too old, Betsy, by the time 
it is ready to open unless you will come and 
teach for me. Why wouldn’t that be a good 
idea, since you appreciate the spirit of it so 
thoroughly ? ” 

“ Fd like to, only I am afraid I shan’t know 
how to do any of those lovely things.” 

“I am sure you could tell stories.” 

“ I often wonder what I shall do when I am 
grown.” Betsy bent her head on her hand 
meditatively. 

“Something quite different from anything you 
expect, probably,” Hyacinth said. 


200 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ Perhaps quite different from anything you 
would choose,” the Gray Friar added. 

Hyacinth wondered if he could be thinking 
of himself. Surely he had nothing to complain 
of. 

“ Still, if it is the only path that leads to the 
city, it must be the best, — the one we would 
choose if we knew.” Elizabeth looked from 
one to the other questioningly. 

The Gray Friar smiled reassuringly. ‘‘It 
must be,” he said. 

“ I told Miss Hyacinth about the paths,” 
Elizabeth was saying, when Miss Una opened 
the door and ushered Mrs. Parton in. 

“ Dear me, this is an unexpected pleasure. 
Hyacinth and Dr. Whitney,” cried that lively 
lady. “ How do you do ? ” 

Miss Unadilla looked embarrassed as she 
greeted the Gray Friar. 

“ Well, Dr. Whitney, you have set all the 
learned ones of Friendship by the ears,” Mrs. 
Parton continued. “ The rest of us accept you 
blindly, and enjoy ourselves. I don’t know 
about Miss Gilderoy. She has a way of look- 
ing wise and saying nothing.” 


THE GRAY FRIAR AGAIN 


201 


“ If there is any wisdom, I fear it is all on 
the outside,” Hyacinth said, rising. “Just now 
my thoughts are bent on culinary matters.” 

“ I have the recipe for you, but need you 
go ? ” asked Miss Una. 

“Yes, thank you, I must I have to make 
biscuits for tea.” 

“You haven’t begun to battle with the cook 
problem. Hyacinth ? Then you little know what 
is before you,” exclaimed Mrs. Parton. 

“ That reminds me,” said Hyacinth, “ of one 
of Louis’s remarks. When I was a little girl I 
had a pet dog I was very fond of, and while I 
was away from home the dog died. Louis was 
deeply interested, and when I returned, not 
knowing what had happened, he greeted me 
with, ‘ Hyacinth, you don’t know what you 
haven’t got.’ I believe I prefer the bliss of 
ignorance.” 

“ I like to know the worst,” said Mrs. Parton, 
laughing. “ What do you say. Dr. Whitney ” 

“ I am not above deluding myself with vain 
hopes sometimes, but I grant it is safer to know 
the truth,” was his reply. 

“ Do you know,” Mrs. Parton went on, “ I 


202 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


have been trying to think where I have heard 
your name recently. It seems to me there was 
something interesting connected with it.” 

“ Whitney is not an uncommon name,” Miss 
Unadilla hastened to say. 

“ I am glad it was something interesting,” 
the Gray Friar remarked calmly. 

I am not at all sure it was anything to 
your credit,” Mrs. Parton said, laughing. “ I 
can’t recall it.” 

As she moved about her kitchen getting her 
biscuits under way. Miss Gilderoy’s thoughts 
were busy with many things. She was glad 
these lectures would soon be over, and Pro- 
fessor Whitney away for good and all. It 
seemed one of those ironical happenings, that 
she should have come to Friendship to encoun- 
ter this man. 

She acknowledged to herself that under other 
circumstances she would have liked to know 
him. That first impression of strength and 
gentleness remained. His manner toward 
Elizabeth, for instance, was charming. She re- 
called his quiet “ It must be ” to her question 
about the paths. Was it meant that her own 


THE GRAY FRIAR AGAIN 


203 


■ path and the Gray Friar’s should cross? It 
must be, as it had happened. But what good 
could come of it ? Was it to show her mistake, 
and rebuke her pride ? 

Owing to the biscuits. Hyacinth brought a 
flushed face to the tea-table. They were good, 
and met with Louis’s approval, so she felt re- 
warded. “I shall learn in time,” she said. 

I don’t want you to,” her brother replied 
discontentedly. “You were meant for some- 
thing different. You are spoiling your hands.” 

“ Not necessarily. Miss Una has the prettiest 
hands, and she often cooks. Louis,” she added, 
“what sort of a person, in appearance I mean, was 
the man to whom Aunt Gilderoy left her money ?” 

“ I don’t know. What suggested him ? Or- 
dinary, I should say. Aunt Gilderoy’s people 
were, you know.” 

“ Should you say he was an educated person ? 
Somehow I received the impression of an ill-bred 
man.” 

“ I saw him only once, and I hardly noticed 
the fellow. What started you on him ? ” 

“ I suppose it is the fact that Betsy’s friend, 
the lecturer, has the same name.” 


204 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ Why, so he has. I wonder if they are 
related,” Louis said carelessly. 

There was no need of enlightening him at 
present. Hyacinth decided, and dropped the 
subject. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST 

A RUMOR CONFIRMED 

I T began as a rumor. Some one was buying 
ground out on the Mill Road. An institution 
of some sort was to be established there. Those 
inclined to a dark view of things settled upon 
an insane asylum, while an orphan’s home, a 
sanitarium, and a home for the aged and infirm 
each had supporters. Last of all it became a 
school, and gradually the other institutions re- 
tired from the field. 

Then it was to be some special kind of school, 
and it began to be connected with Dr. Whitney, 
who, having finished his lectures in Friendship, 
was not seen for a time. He was not far away, 
however, and April found him back again. 

March had been cold and stormy, but a few 
warm days made apparent a faint, green haze 
over the landscape that foretold the time of 
leaves. Elizabeth and the Gray Friar walked 


205 


206 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


out the Mill Road together, she very full of 
enthusiasm over the new school. 

“ And it is really to be the sort of school you 
told me about ? ” she asked. 

“ I am going to try for it,” the Gray Friar 
replied. ** Here,” pointing out a site nearly op- 
posite Hyacinth Hill, “ is where the main build- 
ing will stand. I hope to begin breaking ground 
this month. Beyond, where you see that tall 
sycamore, we shall probably put the gymnasium. 
Other buildings will follow in course of time.” 

“ I can’t wait to see it. And I suppose I 
shall not be here next winter,” said Elizabeth, 
regretfully. 

“ But you are coming to teach for me some 
day,” her companion answered. “ It is hard to 
wait,” he continued. “ It will be a long time 
before we are in running order. We have a 
house down in the town which, remodelled, will 
answer for the kindergarten and primary work 
next year.” 

“ Do you think you will have many children ? ” 
Elizabeth asked, looking at the subject practi- 
cally. “ I should think you might, only there 
aren’t so very many children in Friendship.” 


A RUMOR CONFIRMED 


207 


“ I expect a small beginning, but it will grow. 
The tuition is to be free to any one living in the 
state.” 

“ It will cost a great deal, won’t it ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

Then the Gray Friar must be very rich, she 
decided. 

“ What are you going to call it ? ” she asked. 
“ Billy and I have named it the Gray Friar’s 
School.” 

“ Before I tell you that,” he said, “ I want 
to explain how I came to be doing it at all. I 
haven’t talked much about it, for several reasons, 
but it will all be known very soon now. You 
remember that September day when I found 
you on the bridge ? I was doing some pro- 
specting then.” 

They had reached the front entrance to 
Hyacinth Hill. Elizabeth looked up at the 
house. “ I wonder how Louis is,” she re- 
marked. “He had a cold last week, and he 
was discouraged because his drawings came 
back. I wish he knew you.” 

“ He wouldn’t care for the acquaintance.” 

“ Why, what makes you think so ? ” Elizabeth 
glanced curiously at her friend. 


208 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“That is part of the story,” he replied. 

He seemed in no haste to begin, and they 
turned and walked back as far as the stile in 
silence. “Suppose we rest here in the sun- 
shine,” he suggested. 

The sun was warm, the air soft as velvet, 
along the roadside the grass was thick and 
green and starred with dandelions. 

“ I first saw Hyacinth Hill in the springtime,” 
the Gray Friar said, looking up at Elizabeth 
as she sat on the step above him. 

“Was it long ago ” she asked. 

“ Rather. I was ten years old.” 

Elizabeth tried to think of the Gray Friar as 
a little boy, but found it difficult. 

“ My father died when I was a mere baby,” 
he continued, “ leaving my mother little or 
nothing, and for years she supported herself 
and me by sewing. We lived in a small Illinois 
town, and I went to school and did what I 
could to help her. I loved my mother dearly, 
and my one dream was of the time when I 
should be big enough to work and take care of 
her. 

“Her dream was to have me educated. Her 


A RUMOR CONFIRMED 


209 


own opportunities had been few, but her am- 
bition for me was unbounded, even when her 
failing health made it seem hopeless. I was 
too young to understand her condition or her 
great anxiety for my future. I only knew she 
was distressed. I also knew we were very poor, 
and that sometimes there was barely enough to 
eat. At length in desperation, for she had a 
great deal of pride, my mother appealed to a 
cousin of my father’s, who many years before 
had married a rich man. She asked nothing 
for herself — I suppose she knew she had but 
a short time to live — only that in case of her 
death my education should be provided for. 

“ My cousin replied kindly, and asked my 
mother and me to visit her for a week or two, 
that she might judge for herself, I suppose, 
whether or not we were worthy of help. And 
that is how I happened to come to Friendship 
the first time.” 

'‘Do you mean — Elizabeth began, then 
hesitated. 

The Gray Friar went on. “It was a great 
event to me, that long journey ; but my pleasure 
was quickly turned to grief, for my mother died 


210 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


suddenly a week after we arrived at my cousin’s 
house. 

“ I was a timid child at best, and you can 
guess how desolate I was. There seemed noth- 
ing left to live for. My cousin was kind, but 
she was an elderly person, little used to children, 
and her stateliness frightened me. The person 
to whom I clung was Dr. Milward. He be- 
friended me and gave me courage.” 

“ And it was he who told you about going out 
into the unknown } ” said Elizabeth. 

“ Yes, he made me see that I could still carry 
out my mother’s wishes, though she was no 
longer with me. He took me himself to the 
university town where my cousin thought best to 
place me, and for years kept watch over me. 
And there, to finish the story, I lived in the fam- 
ily of one of the professors until I graduated. 
I was fortunate enough to win a scholarship that 
enabled me to go abroad, and to be from that 
time on independent. In all these years I saw 
my cousin only once or twice. She became in- 
terested in a little • book I published, and wrote 
to me about it ; after that I saw her and dis- 
cussed it with her on several occasions. But 


A RUMOR CONFIRMED 


2II 


I was not in any way prepared to find myself 
her heir. When she died she left me nearly 
all her large estate, in the hope that I would 
use it in carrying out the ideas expressed in my 
book.” 

“ So it was Madam Gilderoy, and you are the 
man ! ” Elizabeth exclaimed solemnly. 

I am the man. And now you understand 
why the school is to be here in Friendship, 
and is to be called the Gilderoy School of 
Manual Work, and also why your friend would 
not care to know me.” 

It is the funniest thing I ever heard,” Eliz- 
abeth said. “ I mean not funny, but strange. 
It is just because Louis doesn’t know you. 
Why, I had an idea myself that you weren’t — ” 

“A desirable acquaintance.?” the Gray Friar 
suggested. 

‘‘ Does Miss Hyacinth know .? ” 

“ I should think she must. I have made no 
effort to conceal my identity. I simply have not 
advertised it.” 

“ If I were you. I’d go to see her and tell 
her all about it.” 

The Gray Friar shook his head. “ That 


212 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


wouldn’t do. You see, Betsy, it is quite natural 
they should feel hardly toward me. It is a 
queer world. It seems as if fate were laughing 
at us sometimes.” He looked away across the 
meadow. “ I have had a way all my life of 
recognizing, almost at a glance, the persons I 
want for friends.” His eyes came back and met 
Elizabeth’s with a smile, causing her to ask — 

“ Did you want me ? ” 

‘‘ Indeed I did. The very first minute I saw 
you ; and the best friends I have have been 
recognized just in that fashion. The first time 
I saw Miss Gilderoy I determined she should 
some day be my friend.” 

“ When was that ” asked Elizabeth. 

“A good while ago. She couldn’t have been 
much older than you are now. After I gradu- 
ated I called on Madam Gilderoy as I passed 
through the city on my way abroad. While I 
talked with her, her niece came in. Probably 
she never gave a second thought to the awk- 
ward fellow her aunt presented to her, but I 
remember telling myself that some day I was 
going to be worthy of her friendship.” 

“ Did you see her any more after that } ” 


A RUMOR CONFIRMED 


213 


‘‘Yes, I saw her a number of times, some 
years later, but I did not meet her. I was poor 
and obscure, and she a beautiful heiress, as the 
story books say ; and then, just as I was begin- 
ning to get on a little, something happens which 
while it makes possible the realization of one of 
my dreams spoils another. Don’t you see?” 
said the Gray Friar. 

Elizabeth leaned forward with her folded arms 
on her knees. “ I am sure Miss Hyacinth likes 
you,” she said. 

“ No ; she makes the best of an awkward 
situation, that is all. However, Betsy, I did not 
mean to say all this. I have nothing to com- 
plain of. There is a lot of work ahead of me 
that seems worth the doing; and they who 
travel bravely and well shall surely come to 
their own. The trouble is we make mistakes 
and sometimes set our hearts on things that 
don’t belong to us.” 

“ Do you remember what you said once about 
not knowing what pleasant thing may be wait- 
ing around the next turn of the road ? ” asked 
Elizabeth. 

The Gray Friar laughed. “Yes; I believe it. 


214 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


too. I suppose the trouble with me is that I 
had a birthday yesterday and it made me feel 
that life is slipping away at an alarming rate.” 

Elizabeth looked at him critically. “ I should 
not think you were so very old,” she said. 

“ Isn’t thirty-five rather old ? ” 

“Still, people live to be verj/ old nowadays,” 
she answered encouragingly. 

The Gray Friar laughed, such a genuine, 
merry laugh, it showed him young at heart, in 
spite of the weight of his years. 

“ Thank you, Betsy,” he said. “ I am glad I 
have you for a friend, whatever happens.” 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SECOND 

AN AWKWARD SITUATION 

A nd you have known it all this time? I 
can’t see why you kept it such a secret. 
I hate to be treated like a child,” Louis spoke 
pettishly, a frown on his face.- 

He had slipped back of late. His improve- 
ment, so marked in the winter, had given place 
to something of the old languor and depression. 
Disappointment at the difficulty he met with in 
disposing of his drawings had much to do with 
this. In reality he had had rather good fortune 
for a beginner ; but to Louis himself the path 
to anything like success began to seem hope- 
lessly long and tiresome. 

Naturally he was often irritable, and these 
outbreaks would be followed by bitter self-re- 
proach which Hyacinth found harder to bear 
than his ill temper. Growth is a slow and 
sometimes painful progress, with repeated fail- 


215 


2I6 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


ures. Louis had taken a long step forward, but 
because he had lost his old attitude of self- 
pity he found himself worse rather than better. 

All Friendship was talking about the new 
school and Professor Whitney, pluming itself 
over its more intellectual neighbors, to whom no 
such good fortune had come. Louis had the 
news through the county paper, where the editor 
took occasion to give the history of the Gilderoy 
family, and paint in brilliant colors the growing 
fame of Martin Whitney, and the benefits that 
would accrue to the village through the estab- 
lishment there of such an institution. 

If it had been about anything else, Louis 
would have laughed over the elaborate style 
and lofty diction of the article; but as it was, it 
came to him with a shock of annoyance he was 
long in recovering from. 

“ I did not know about the school until a few 
days ago, Louis,” Hyacinth said. “ I guessed 
Professor Whitney’s identity at once, but it 
seemed useless to trouble you with it. I sup- 
posed he would be here only a short time.” 

“ I never heard of anything so disagreeable. 
Having one’s family dragged into print in this 


AN AWKWARD SITUATION 21/ 

Style, and in connection with that man. Now he 
has the money, why can’t he leave us in peace } 
It is. indelicate, it’s insulting ! Is he determined 
to flaunt his money in our faces ? Why should 
he come here to found his school ? ” 

“ Don’t be unjust, Louis. He is not that sort 
of a man, I am sure.” 

“ What sort of a man ? What do you know 
about him ? ” Louis demanded. 

“ I heard one or two of' his lectures.” 

“ I don’t see how you could have had so 
little pride.” 

And besides,” Hyacinth continued, “ I can’t 
quite ignore the opinion of Dr. Milward and 
Mr. Whittredge, and others.” 

“ I don’t say he may not be learned, but 
I do insist that he is lacking in the right sort 
of feeling to come and plant himself at our door. 
It looks as if he wished to force us into selling 
him the place.” 

Hyacinth was silent for a moment, remember- 
ing she had had much the same thought herself. 
When she spoke it was to say, “You know he 
did ask the privilege of explaining matters to 
me, and I declined to meet him.” 


2i8 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


‘‘That is one comfort/- said Louis. 

Hyacinth was not so sure of this. She went 
out into the sweet morning air and stood by 
the sun-dial. The old place had never seemed 
so beautiful and homelike. In spite of the 
anxieties of the winter, each week had increased 
her attachment to it. Must she give it up ? 
She did need some money so very much. 

It was some hours later that Elizabeth found 
Louis alone and undeniably cross. She was 
eager to talk about the new school, and she 
had persuaded herself that the Gilderoys would 
feel exactly as she did when they heard the 
whole story. 

“ I don’t wish his name mentioned,” Louis 
announced. “ Everybody has seen fit to make 
a silly secret of the matter, and now I do not 
choose to hear about it.” 

“Why, Louis, I did not know it myself,” 
Elizabeth urged, greatly taken aback. “ Do 
let me tell you — ” 

“ No, I thank you. The less said the better. 
But just ask your friend from me why he has 
so little sense of propriety as to put his school 
at our very door } ” 


AN AWKWARD SITUATION 


219 


I know that without asking. It was the 
only suitable ground he could find, and it is to 
be called the Gilderoy School.” 

The last straw,” Louis groaned. 

“ I don’t think you are a bit fair, Louis — 
not a bit. The Gray Friar didn’t want the 
money, and he isn’t spending it for himself. 
I think you ought to let me tell you what he 
said ; but if you don’t want to hear it, I guess 
I’ll go.” 

“ Oh, very well. I can’t expect to be so 
attractive as your other friends.” Louis took 
up a book and opened it. 

Elizabeth turned away, disappointed and 
hurt. Outside she encountered Hyacinth, at- 
tending to the planting of her sweet peas; but 
though she lingered talking with her, she did 
not mention the subject which was uppermost 
in her mind. 

I suppose you are very much interested in 
the new school,” Hyacinth said presently, divin- 
ing the state of affairs. “ You must not mind 
if Louis is a good deal prejudiced against Pro- 
fessor Whitney. He will get over it in time.” 

Elizabeth brightened at once, and joyfully 


220 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


assented to Hyacinth’s proposal to go in search 
of wild flowers. As they strolled through the 
wood, bending and peering about the roots of 
the trees, finding spring-beauties and anemones 
in abundance, and now and then a dog-tooth 
violet, she asked, “ Miss Hyacinth, you like the 
Gray Frair, don’t you ? ” 

“ I don’t know him, Betsy,” was her reply. 

“ He thinks you don’t like him,” Elizabeth 
ventured. 

“I see no occasion for his thinking about it 
at all,” Miss Gilderoy said with dignity. 

“He said,” — began Elizabeth, then became 
absorbed in her flowers. 

“ What were you going to say } ” 

“ Perhaps he’d rather I wouldn’t tell you.” 

“Oh, very well.” 

“ He told me about coming here when he was 
a little boy, and how lonely he was when his 
mother died. Did you know that was her 
grave, under the cedar ? Cousin Charles said 
so.” 

Their search brought them out into the meadow 
before long, and they stopped at the stile to sort 
their treasures. 


AN AWKWARD SITUATION 


221 


“I wonder,” said Hyacinth, ‘‘if your Gray 
Friar has all the land he needs.” 

“Cousin Charles would know. He is one of 
the trustees. But you aren’t going to sell Hya- 
cinth Hill?” 

“ I don’t know. Something must be done for 
Louis. Dr. Baird advises a course of treatment 
that will cost a great deal. I may have to have 
some ready money.” 

After this what more natural than that Eliza- 
beth seeing Professor Whitney approaching, 
should hail him. “ We can ask him now,” she 
said. 

“ Miss Hyacinth wants to know,” she began as 
he came near, then becoming conscious that Miss 
Gilderoy was annoyed, she hesitated, in embarrass- 
ment. 

“ Yes,” said the Gray Friar, lifting his hat. 

Miss Gilderoy felt some explanation was de- 
manded. “ It is quite unnecessary to trouble 
you. I simply wondered if you had all the 
ground you need for your school in case I 
should decide to sell.” 

The Gray Friar’s manner was hesitating. “ I 
trust you are not thinking of parting with Hya- 


222 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


cinth Hill — that is, I should be unhappy to 
think that you might find any annoyance — ” he 
paused, rather hopelessly. 

Miss Gilderoy looked amused. “You may 
remember that possessions sometimes have to be 
parted with, in spite of treasured associations,” 
she said. “ I am reminded that a haughty spirit 
goes before a fall.” 

The Gray Friar recovered himself. “There 
is a field belonging, I think, to your place which 
the directors may be glad to purchase. I would 
suggest that you consult either Dr. Milward or 
Mr. Whittredge, if you care to consider it.” 

Miss Gilderoy thanked him gravely. He had 
the best of it. He had politely reminded her 
that he looked upon her refusal to meet him as 
final, so far as anything connected with the school 
was concerned. 

Elizabeth wondered why the Gray Friar and 
Miss Hyacinth were not nicer to each other. If 
he wanted her for a friend, why did he not say 
so, without more ado.? Why didn’t he tell her 
how surprised he was at having the money left 
him .? Betsy thought that all the trouble, if there 
was any, came from the concealment of their 


AN AWKWARD SITUATION 


223 


real feelings ; and why should they be so 
stupid ? 

She had little opportunity to talk with the 
Gray Friar that evening, as he and Dr. Milward 
had business to discuss ; but he had brought her 
what he called a dodger. It was a large card, on 
which was printed : — 

FOR PILGRIMS 

God is not ashamed to be called their God ; for he 
hath prepared for them a city. 

The way to find what you seek is to be worthy of it. 

Do not forget the end of the journey in the pleasure 
or difficulty of your path. 

Look for the golden flower of happiness as you go. It 
grows along every pathway, however difficult. Those who 
will may gather it. 

They who travel bravely and well, shall surely come to 
their own. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-THIRD 

AMONG OLD LETTERS 

FTER several false starts spring came in 



at last. Once more the sky was fair ; 
the willows bending over Friendly Creek saw 
themselves veiled in misty green that grew each 
day a deeper tint, the vines on the house at 
Hyacinth Hill burst into leaf over night, along 
the wood path violets bloomed lavishly, and the 
scent of lilacs was in the air. 

What could be more pleasant these delicious 
days than a walk out the Mill Road for a cup 
of Hyacinth’s tea and a social chat.? Her Sat- 
urday afternoons became popular again. 

The only drawback was that it seemed hardly 
permissible to introduce there the favorite topic 
of conversation, which caused a certain restraint. 
Ground was being broken for the new school, 
and those who had espoused the cause, as they 
considered it, of the Gilderoys, and who were 


224 


AMONG OLD LETTERS 


225 


at the same time admirers of Dr. Whitney, 
were readjusting their minds to the present 
state of affairs. 

A number of persons could now recall the 
sudden death at Hyacinth Hill, twenty-five years 
ago, of a relative of Madam Gilderoy, and also 
dimly remembered that there had been a child, 
a freckle-faced boy, of whom nothing more was 
heard. Madam Gilderoy had never confided her 
affairs to any one in Friendship. 

“The long-lost heir,” was Mrs. Parton’s name 
for Dr. Whitney. “ It is too awkward for any- 
thing,” she declared. “Think of my wondering 
right to his face why his name seemed fa- 
miliar ! ” 

“I think next to having the money them- 
selves, this is the best thing that could happen 
— to have the family name perpetuated in this 
manner,” said the colonel. 

Miss Unadilla, talking to Dr. Milward, wished 
they could be friends, — the Gilderoys and Mar- 
tin Whitney. 

“ It will come,” the minister replied confi- 
dently. “I have a fancy that Hyacinth regrets 
a little the position she took at the beginning.” 


226 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“Why doesn’t she say so then?” Miss Una 
exclaimed, for she was heart and soul enlisted 
for the Gray Friar. 

Dr. Milward smiled. “ It isn’t so easy to 
take things back,” he said. 

Hyacinth showed no more ' disposition to avoid 
the subject of the school than she did to dwell 
upon it. She treated it as of no more concern 
to her than to any other inhabitant of Friend- 
ship. And the revival of the history of the 
Hyacinth and Gilderoy families stirred a fresh 
interest in genealogical discussion, and led 
happily away from less agreeable topics. 

Colonel Parton, who was an enthusiast in 
what his wife called the ancient history of 
Friendship, drew Hyacinth into a spirited argu- 
ment one afternoon over some tradition of the 
Hyacinth family connected with the marriage of 
her great-grandmother. The matter was left 
unsettled, and Miss Gilderoy remembering cer- 
tain old letters sent to her after her aunt’s 
death, by the executor of her estate, went in 
search of them next day. 

“ I have an idea that there are some letters 
of our grandmother here,” she said to Louis, 


AMONG OLD LETTERS 


227 


entering the sitting room with the packet in her 
hand. I have been meaning for a long time 
to go over them.” 

The packet had been tied up and labelled in 
Madam Gilderoy’s own hand, “To be given to 
my niece, Louise Hyacinth Gilderoy,” with a 
date, a few months before her death. 

“ I can’t say I am much interested,” Louis 
remarked, as his sister laid the bundle on the 
table and began to untie the tape. It was 
knotted, and she worked over it for some min- 
utes before she loosened it, and the papers fell 
apart, ancient-looking, yellow letters, most of 
them. Among them lay a fresh white enve- 
lope, which by its unlikeness to the rest at- 
tracted her attention. 

She was not in search of anything so new, 
but she took it up curiously. It was unsealed, 
and enclosed what appeared to be another enve- 
lope. Across one end was written in her aunt’s 
hand, “To be deposited with my other papers.” 

Hyacinth gazed at it, puzzled. How had it 
come among these letters ? The probable ex- 
planation occurred to her. Her aunt, in putting 
her papers in order, had unintentionally included 


228 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


this in the packet of old letters, instead of with 
other papers she was sending to her box. 

What could it be ? For a moment Hyacinth’s 
vision was blurred, her heart in her throat. Sup- 
pose — but it could not be ! But might it not be 
a codicil ? If it should be ! And she needed 
money so much. There was a possibility that it 
was another will. What if the money was theirs, 
after all ^ 

“ Have you found anything interesting ? ” asked 
Louis. 

“ I haven’t read any of them yet,” Hyacinth 
answered, gathering the letters together and 
carrying them to the window where she would be 
out of the range of Louis’s eyes. She held the en- 
velope in her hand. She hesitated to examine it, 
from the feeling that it had not been meant for her. 

She looked out across the meadows to where 
above the trees the spires of Friendship showed. 
For herself, she thought, she did not want the 
money. She could be content with a simple life, 
if only Louis had what he needed. It would be 
put to better use in the Gray Friar’s hands than in 
hers. If by any possibility it should come to her, 
she felt she should wish to give it back. 


AMONG OLD LETTERS 


229 

A little thought convinced her she had as much 
right as any one to examine the document. With 
trembling fingers she drew out the enclosed en- 
velope. The question was settled, for it was ad- 
dressed to herself and sealed. She cut it open 
and read : — 

‘‘ My dear Niece: 

“This letter will be given to you after my death, 
which I feel cannot be far off. It has been my 
habit to do what seemed to me right, without 
making explanations or caring for criticism. I 
am departing from my usual custom, for I wish 
you to know why I have disposed of my estate 
as I have. 

“It is a platitude that money does not bring 
happiness ; it is no less true that its possession 
is often the direct cause of unhappiness, so few 
persons are fit for the responsibility of large 
wealth. I grant you have too much character and 
poise to be hurt by it ; but your brother’s chance to 
be a man depends, I clearly see, upon his having 
an incentive to put to use his talents, otherwise 
he is likely to degenerate into a mere pleasure 
lover. He will have enough to finish his college 


230 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


course and give him a start, and you will not 
starve with Hyacinth Hill. 

“ Martin Whitney, to whom I have left most of 
my money, will, I am confident, use it wisely in 
carrying out certain educational ideas in which I 
have become interested through his writings. I 
have not bound him in any way, believing that 
freedom is essential to the successful working out 
of any large plan. I shall not explain why I have 
such confidence in a man I have talked with only 
a few times. I am aware I shall be called a fool, 
but I can stand that. In a letter which will be 
given to him when you receive this, I have asked 
him to consult with you in regard to these 
plans. Your common sense and clear head will 
be of assistance to him, and I count upon your 
interest. 

“ Affectionately your aunt, 

‘‘Maria Gilderoy.” 

So this was the explanation of the note she had 
thought so officious ! The present state of affairs 
was not altered by it, except that now she could 
speak to Dr. Whitney. A foolish prejudice had 
kept her from having a part in a great work — 


AMONG OLD LETTERS 


231 

and all the while she had been lamenting her 
uselessness. 

Hyacinth had never had any hard feeling 
toward her aunt. She was sure if she could 
have known of Louis’s invalidism she would 
have done more for him. And who could say, 
even now, that it might not work out for the 
best ? 

She sat thinking for some time, then she car- 
ried the letter to her brother, and read part of it 
to him. “You see,” she said, “we have been 
mistaken, you and 1.” 

“If you think I am going to have anything 
to do with that man, you are very much mis- 
taken,” Louis insisted crossly. 

“ I shall let him know about this letter,” said 
Hyacinth. “ For my part, I prefer to be 
friendly.” 

The question was. Should she write to the 
Gray Friar, or wait till she met him again ? A 
dozen different doubts assailed her. Was it not too 
trifling a matter to write about ? Did the delay 
of the letter sufficiently explain, after all Quite 
unable to decide what to do, she did nothing. 

At this time William and Elizabeth were away 


232 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


in Washington, spending the Easter holidays with 
their father. Without their almost daily visits it 
seemed very quiet at Hyacinth Hill. 

There had been a slight coolness between 
Louis and Elizabeth of late, which he felt more 
than he would acknowledge. He had come to 
depend upon her friendship, and life seemed dull 
without her bright companionship. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH 

AN ACCIDENT 

“ TT is as warm as June to-day,” Mrs. Parton 

A remarked, joining Belle on the porch one 
afternoon the middle of May. “ I ought to go 
down to see old Mrs. Bailey, — Miss Julia said 
she was ailing, — but I simply haven’t the 
energy.” 

“ I thought I’d get Betsy to go up to Hya- 
cinth Hill with me, but I didn’t finish my work 
in time,” said Belle, who was studying for her 
college examinations. 

Miss Martha Doane came in at the gate. Her 
manner was slightly excited. She took the chair 
Belle gave her and made a few opening remarks, 
however, before she asked, “ Have you heard 
about the accident ? ” 

“ What accident ? ” Belle inquired, with languid 
interest, so often Miss Martha’s excitements fell 
flat. 


233 


234 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ I thought you couldn’t have heard it, but 
then you see so much of the Sayres.” 

“ What has happened to the Sayres ? ” Mrs. 
Parton asked. 

“ It is Elizabeth. Luke Ramsey told me. I 
saw him driving down street just as I was 
starting out — ” 

“Is she badly hurt ? What was it ? Do tell 
us,” Belle urged, with some impatience. 

“ I am trying to tell you,” said Miss Martha, 
coolly. “ I stopped Luke to ask him if his 
mother could let me have some butter, and 
he said he had been up to Hyacinth Hill 
with Dr. Thomas. He said the doctor had 
just come in from a long drive to the country, 
when he was telephoned to come to the Gil- 
deroys’, at once, somebody was burned, and 
as his horse was tired he got Luke to take 
him.” 

“ Burned ” Belle exclaimed, “ and it was 
Elizabeth .? ” 

“I am telling you what Luke said, and he 
got it from Uncle Ben, so you can believe it or 
not as you choose. It seems Louis was out in 
the grounds somewhere in his chair, and smok- 


AN ACCIDENT 


235 

ing, and somehow or other when he threw his 
cigar away it set fire to Elizabeth’s dress. She 
was on the grass, playing with the dog, I be- 
lieve, when all of a sudden her dress was in a 
blaze. 

“ Uncle Ben was working at some little dis- 
tance, and he heard her scream, and saw the 
flames, but being so rheumatic he couldn’t 
get to her. And he said Louis just jumped 
right out of his chair when Elizabeth started 
to run and called to her to stop, and then first 
thing they knew that man who is building the 
school — you know — came tearing after her, 
and pulled off his coat and wrapped it around 
her and got her down on the grass and put it 
out. Luke says she is awfully burned, though.” 

Belle rose. “ Oh, mother, do you suppose it 
is true ? ” she said. 

“ I shouldn’t put too much stress on the 
accuracy of a story Luke Ramsey and Uncle 
Ben got up between them,” Mrs. Barton replied. 

However, something must have happened. 
I’ll go right up there. I may be of some 
assistance.” 

“ You can believe it or not as you like, but I 


236 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


guess they wouldn’t have sent for Dr. Thomas 
in such a hurry if there hadn’t been some- 
thing wrong,” said Miss Martha, tossing her 
head. 

“ I don’t doubt that. I am only hoping for 
the best,” Mrs. Parton answered. “You’ll ex- 
cuse me if I leave you. Miss Martha ? ” 

“ Dear little Betsy ! I can’t bear to think she 
may be dreadfully hurt,” exclaimed Belle. 

“ She’s probably disfigured for life,” Miss 
Martha said, adding, “ I’ll go with you as far as 
Dr. Milward’s, Mrs. Parton.” 

“ There’s Billy ! ” At sight of a bicycle com- 
ing down the street. Belle ran to the gate. 

But William only shook his head and called, 
“ I can’t stop now. I’ll see you on my way 
back,” and went on. 

Belle sat alone on the porch, and the half 
hour that passed before William was seen re- 
turning seemed interminable. She went down 
to meet him. “ Is she dreadfully hurt ? You 
can stop a minute, can’t you ? ” she asked. 

William left his wheel and came and leaned 
on the gate. “ I don’t know. The doctor said 
she — she wouldn’t die,” the last word came in 


AN ACCIDENT 


237 


a husky whisper, and Billy gazed steadily 
across the street for several seconds. 

“Come in and rest a minute, you are all 
tired out,” urged Belle. “ Is there anything in 
the world I can do } Mother has gone up 
there.” 

“ No, thank you. Miss Una and Miss Hya- 
cinth are there, and they have sent for a nurse. 
I went down to telegraph to father. I have to 
go back to the drug store presently for some- 
thing they are putting up,” William said, walk- 
ing beside her to the porch and sitting down 
on the step. 

“ Miss Martha told us — she got it from Luke 
Ramsey. We were hoping it was not so bad 
as he thought,” Belle said. 

“ I don’t know,” William said again. “ I’m 
afraid it is. I was at home when it happened, 
and they wouldn’t let me see her. The doctor 
had just come when I got there, and — she 
was suffering so — oh. Belle, I can’t stand it.” 

Belle put a sympathetic hand on his arm, 
her eyes were full of tears. “ It may not be as 
bad as you think, Billy.” 

“ I told her once that she had never had 


238 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


anything to bear, and now — Betsy is so pretty, 
you know.” The choking in his throat stopped 
him. 

“ Indeed she is,” Belle replied, thinking of 
Miss Martha’s words. “ Wasn’t it lucky that 
Professor Whitney happened to be near } ” 

“ And it was all Louis Gilder oy’s fault,” Billy 
burst forth. 

“ Luke said he got out of his chair and went 
after her,” Belle said incredulously. 

“ I don’t know. They said something about his 
fainting, but I didn’t listen. I don’t care for 
anything but Betsy.” 

They sat on the step talking for some minutes 
longer, William finding Belle’s sympathy very 
grateful. They spoke of Elizabeth, of her bright- 
ness and sweetness, and on their hearts the 
mystery of life and death lay heavily. Only a 
few hours ago she had been with them, and now 
she seemed far away. 

By eight o’clock things were quiet at Hyacinth 
Hill. The nurse had arrived and been installed, 
and Elizabeth was asleep. The doctor had given 
Louis something to quiet him, and he, too, was in 


AN ACCIDENT 


239 

bed. For the first time in four hours Hyacinth 
had time to sit down and think connectedly. 

What a terrible afternoon it had been ! From 
the moment she met Martin Whitney at the door 
with Elizabeth in his arms, she had seemed to 
herself to be somebody else. She could not 
understand her own promptness. How had she 
known what to do ? All her powers had been 
brought to a focus by the terrible necessity of 
doing something. There had been a quiet 
word of suggestion now and again from the 
Gray Friar, as they worked together over 
the injured girl. Hyacinth remembered now 
how tender he was, with a touch as delicate as 
a woman’s. It was the gentleness of great 
strength. 

And after the doctor and Miss Una relieved 
her of part of the responsibility, she was called 
to her brother, who had been found in a faint 
on the sitting-room floor. 

The sight of Elizabeth’s danger had proved the 
shock needed to arouse him. The impulse to go 
to her relief had given him the power, but the 
horror of it had dazed him so he could do nothing 
for her. 


240 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


Louis could not reproach himself bitterly 
enough. He could think of nothing but Eliza- 
beth. He begged to be allowed to see her, and 
talked wildly of what he would do if she died. 
His state of excitement was pitiful. The fact that 
he had walked from the gate to the house seemed 
to mean nothing to him. Hyacinth wondered if 
the restoration would prove only temporary. She 
was afraid to hope. 

When Louis had been restored to conscious- 
ness, and to some degree of composure, she came 
upon the Gray Friar on the back porch having his 
right hand tied up by Uncle Ben. 

“ You are hurt and said nothing all this time ” 
she demanded. 

“ Only a little,” the Gray Friar replied meekly, 
but he made no objection when she swept Uncle 
Ben aside and took the hand in charge herself. 
In the process of bandaging their eyes would meet 
now and then, and when eyes meet at close range 
any disguise is difficult. The experience of the 
afternoon had brought them into a sudden sort of 
intimacy ; they had found each other out. Cer- 
tainly the Gray Friar encountered no hostility in 
Hyacinth’s eyes, and she found no resentment 


AN ACCIDENT 


241 


in his. So little need did there seem for expla- 
nations that Hyacinth quite forgot her aunt’s 
letter. 

“ If Elizabeth will only get well,” was all she 
said. 

And the Gray Friar answered, “I believe she 
will.” 

She went over it all, sitting there alone. She 
had the feeling of having been swept onward by 
some great wave, so that an hour had brought 
about what years might have failed to compass. 

Presently William stood in the door, a forlorn 
figure. 

“ Billy dear, is that you ? Come in. Don’t 
look so unhappy.” Hyacinth beckoned him to a 
place beside her on the sofa. “ Betsy is going to 
get well, and the doctor thinks she will not be 
disfigured. Of course we couldn’t help fearing 
that, but you see it is chiefly her back and one 
side. Her neck is only a little scorched. Fortu- 
nately Dr. Whitney reached her in time to keep 
the flames from her face.” 

And William, great boy that he was, broke 
down and cried from sheer relief. “ I don’t know 
what makes me such a baby,” he sobbed. 


242 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ I like you the better for it, Billy,” Hyacinth 
said, with her arm around him. “ It does not 
seem babyish to me, but that is because I am not 
a man, I suppose. Louis is breaking his heart 
over his carelessness,” she added. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-FIFTH 

AFTERWARD 

T he minister’s house was besieged with in- 
quirers, and many found their way out to 
Hyacinth Hill. Everybody liked Elizabeth. Her 
sweetness and friendliness had made her a favorite, 
and from old Mrs. Bailey down, all were anxious 
to show their solicitude and sympathy in some 
tangible way. Flowers and fruit and all sorts of 
things to eat and drink were sent, until a regi- 
ment of invalids would have been needed to con- 
sume them. 

For the first few days the story of the accident 
took on new and interesting features hourly, as 
the one spectator. Uncle Ben, was in demand, and 
hugely enjoyed his importance. 

With each recital Professor Whitney’s heroism 
grew, and his slight injuries became serious. The 
climax was reached by the report that he lay at 
the point of death at Dr. Milward’s, having in- 


243 


244 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


haled the flame. His appearance at the post- 
office corrected this. 

Though the first fears for Elizabeth were not 
realized, the shock had been very great, aside 
from the burns, and it would not be possible to 
move her for weeks, the physicians said. Mr. 
Sayre and William were the only ones allowed 
to s-ee her, and they for not more than a few 
minutes at a time. 

She was a very wan likeness of the rosy, sunny 
Betsy they were used to, but she could smile at 
them. “ I didn’t know you were here, father,” 
she said. 

“ My darling, you did not suppose I could stay 
away when you were so badly hurt,” he replied, 
bending to kiss her. 

“You can tell mother that I won’t be scarred 
very much,” Elizabeth added. “She wouldn’t 
like to have a scarred daughter.” 

“ Mother will think as I do, my precious, that 
the chief thing is to have you at all.” 

Elizabeth lay still for a while with her eyes 
closed. When she opened them she said, “ It is 
nice to have people care.” 

“ Everybody cares, Betsy,” William exclaimed 


AFTERWARD 


245 


earnestly. He had an odd, embarrassed feeling, 
and found it difficult to think of anything to say. 
Now he went near and patted her hand. 

A little smile curled her lips. “ Billy, I remem- 
bered rugs and blankets, but there weren’t any; 
that is why I lost my head.” Then she added, 
“The Gray Friar saved my life, didn’t he.^* I 
want to see him sometime — when I am rested — 
and Louis, too.” 

Louis crept about the house like an unhappy 
ghost, avoiding every one, silent and moody. 
His newly regained power to walk had not been 
lost, as Hyacinth feared, though he moved in a 
weak, uncertain way ; but it brought him no pleas- 
ure, it had been won at too great a cost. 

Hyacinth relieved about Elizabeth, rejoicing at 
the prospect of her brother’s complete recovery, 
busy and useful as she was, could not quite under- 
stand his depression, nor realize how, as he sat 
for long intervals gazing with melancholy eyes 
into space, he was going over and over that ter- 
rible experience. 

He begged to see Elizabeth, yet when permis- 
sion was at length given, it threw him into a 
pitiable state of excitement. 


246 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


It was thought best to prepare her for seeing 
him on his feet, and she greeted him with, “ Why, 
Louis, how tall you are!” smiling at him from 
her pillows. “ I am so glad. I thought it must 
be a dream that you ran after me. Now when 
I get well we can take walks, can’t we ? ” she 
went on, as Louis remained silent. 

He sat down beside her and tried to speak, but 
could not find his voice. 

“You mustn’t mind, Louis. I’m going to get 
well, you know.” 

“Oh, Betsy, can you forgive me.?” Louis 
leaned his head on his hand, with his face half 
hidden. 

“ Why, it was an accident. Of course I 
do.” 

“ But it was miserable carelessness, and besides, 
I ought not to have been smoking at all. The 
doctor said it was bad for me in my condition, 
and Hyacinth begged me not to. You see, I 
have gone on always doing the things I liked, 
anyhow. But I wouldn’t have hurt you, Betsy, 
for anything in the world, and if — ” he broke 
off abruptly. 

“I know you wouldn’t, Louis, so please don’t 


AFTERWARD 247 

mind. Now you can walk, you don’t know how 
glad I am.” 

“ Don’t you see how that makes it all the 
worse — for me to benefit by your suffer- 
ing.?” 

A worried, puzzled expression came into Eliza- 
beth’s eyes, and the nurse looking in feared 
she was being excited and sent Louis away. 

The next person she saw was the Gray Friar, 
several days later. There was nothing exciting 
about him. Except for the bandaged right hand 
he was just the same, gray clothes and all, 
though perhaps there was a new tenderness in 
the smile with which he said — 

“Well, my little Betsy, this is a rough bit of 
road, isn’t it .? ” 

Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled. “ I have been think- 
ing about that. When I’m very uncomfortable, I 
try to remember about those who travel bravely, 
you know; and there are nice things even about 
being burned. People love you and are sorry. 
I am afraid I haven’t been very brave,” she 
added. 

“ I rather think you have,” said the Grey 
Friar. 


248 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


“ I told father to tell you how much obliged 
I am to you for saving my life.” 

Though the Gray Friar smiled, something 
glistened in his eyes. My little friend,” he 
said, “ I can hardly imagine a greater privilege 
than being allowed to come to your help the 
other day. I like to believe it was part of the 
plan that I should pass by just then.” 

“That our paths should cross,” she added. 

The Gray Friar was welcome to come as he 
pleased to Hyacinth Hill in these days, which 
was fortunate, as Elizabeth often asked for him. 

“He is so comfortable,” she said to' Miss 
Unadilla; “he helps me to be patient.” 

Miss Una understood. There was something 
restful in the man’s quiet strength. And Eliza- 
beth had need of patience as the tedious con- 
valescence began. 

“ You and Miss Hyacinth are friends now, 
aren’t you } ” she remarked one day when Pro- 
fessor Whitney sat beside her. 

“ Yes, there was a little misunderstanding which 
has been cleared away,” he replied, for the mat- 
ter of the letter had been explained before 
this. 


AFTERWARD 


249 


“ I knew Miss Hyacinth liked you,” Elizabeth 
said triumphantly. 

“ It just goes to show, Betsy, how out of what 
seems hard and cruel something good is sure 
to come. Miss Gilderoy and I found a point of 
contact, to use an educational phrase, in our 
anxiety for you.” 

“ And Louis found he could walk,” Elizabeth 
added. “ It makes me think of the little golden 
flower that grows along every path. ‘Good in 
everything,’ that is Belle’s motto.” 

When she was able to stand it, Elizabeth was 
lifted to a couch and moved into the sitting 
room for a change. Hyacinth would not hear 
of her being taken back to Dr. Milward’s. The 
air was purer up here on the hill, she insisted, 
and being on the ground floor Elizabeth could 
be carried about more easily, and would soon be 
able to enjoy the porch. She was so urgent that 
for the present no change was made. Miss 
Una went home every night now, leaving the 
nurse in charge, but through the day she or 
William, and sometimes Dr. Milward, too, were 
sure to be there. Once a week Mr. Sayre came 
up from Washington, and all that devotion could 


250 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


suggest was done for the invalid. They had all 
loved her dearly before, but it took the shock of 
possible loss to show them just what her life 
meant to them. 

“Billy, I believe you are quite fond of me,” 
Elizabeth said one day. 

“Yes, I am,” Billy acknowledged. 

“ And if I had burned to death, you would have 
been sorry. I was thinking the other night how 
badly mother would have felt, and I cried myself, 
just a little. Wasn’t that silly.?” 

Not long ago Billy would have thought it 
supremely silly, but now he said, “ I couldn’t 
get along without you, Betsy. It is awfully lone- 
some as it is.” 

Elizabeth felt that this made up for all Will- 
iam’s teasing, past and to come. 

One day the Gray Friar came in with a lot 
of plans under his arm, and nothing would do 
but Betsy must see them. So he unrolled and 
explained them, going on to tell of some of the 
special features of the school. Hyacinth, who 
was there, made suggestions and asked ques- 
tions, and Billy offered some frank criticisms, 
and the Gray Friar went on talking shop at a 
terrible rate, as he afterward said. 


AFTERWARD 


251 


Elizabeth was delighted, nothing pleased her 
so much as to have bright talk going on around 
her, even though she was too weak to take 
much part in it. 

But Louis held aloof. He continued to brood 
over his carelessness, and the suffering it had 
brought upon Elizabeth, with morbid persistence, 
and worse than this was the unreasonable jeal- 
ousy he felt toward Professor Whitney, who 
had been able to save Elizabeth when he had 
failed. 

Strangely enough his physical condition im- 
proved slowly; each day he could take a few 
more steps, and his desire to escape from peo- 
ple kept him out of doors a large part of the 
time. His secret purpose was to get strong 
enough to go far away somewhere, beyond the 
reach of everybody he had ever known ; and he 
had vague dreams of retrieving himself, of re- 
turning rich and distinguished after years of 
absence, but these fancies brought him little 
comfort — his self-love had received too deep a 
wound. 

And where was help to come from now ? 
Nothing Hyacinth could say, either in reproach 


252 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


or encouragement, had any effect. Elizabeth 
saw his depression with puzzled discomfort. 
She did not understand. 

It was a little brown book that at length 
spoke to him. Some one had left it on the 
stone bench by the sun-dial, and Louis, drop- 
ping down to rest after walking to and from 
the gate, picked it up and idly turned the 
leaves. This caught his eye : — 

“ Perhaps you are torturing yourself with 
regret because of some act of your own which 
has brought pain upon another. Believe me, it 
is useless — worse, it is paralyzing. Face like 
a man the truth that the past cannot be un- 
done, then make of this bitter experience an 
education. With courage and faith consecrate 
your life to the best you know. Be something, 
do something — and now.” 

It seemed to Louis it must have been written 
just for him. There was comfort in it, for it 
told him some one else had had a like expe- 
rience. There was a sting because of the sug- 
gestion that to brood over the past as he was 
doing was unmanly. There was hope in the 
ringing appeal of the last sentence. 


AFTERWARD 


253 


The sound of steps on the gravel road made 
him drop the little volume hastily. It was Miss 
Unadilla and Hyacinth, who stopped to speak 
to him, and Hyacinth, seeing the book in the 
corner of the bench, took it up and carried it 
away. 

The message seemed to him so personal 
Louis could not bring himself to ask his sister 
for the book, even the title of which he had 
not noticed. Perhaps he had had from it what 
belonged to him. The words he read seemed 
burned into his memory. 

He fought his battle out that day, and from 
a boy he became a man, earnest and deter- 
mined. Probably nobody understood the 
change, though it was manifest to all. He 
threw off his depression, was no longer irri- 
table; he took out his drawing materials once 
more, and though graver than he used to be, 
he no longer preferred solitude. Perhaps it 
was the easier for him that the Gray Friar 
was called away about this time, and so was 
not the frequent visitor he had been of late. 


CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH 


PATHS THAT CROSS 


HE last of September; next week work 



begins.” Louis leaned on the stile and 


watched Elizabeth, who sat there arranging a 
bunch of golden-rod and white asters. 

She looked older and more delicate than a year 
ago, but there was a soft color in her face, and 
her blue eyes were as merry as ever. Louis was 
greatly changed. He was brown as a nut from 
three months camping in the woods, and though 
still slender for his height, his chest had broad- 
ened, and he had taken on a look of vigor that 
made it seem impossible he had ever been the 
helpless invalid of last winter. 

“ I am glad you aren’t going to give up your 
drawing, Louis,” Elizabeth said. “The Gray 
PTiar thinks you have a great deal of talent.” 

“ I know I have some, and it is what I long to 
do, so I shall believe and venture.” 


254 


PATHS THAT CROSS 


255 


“You are going out into the unknown, aren’t 
you ? ” Elizabeth lifted her eyes and smiled at 
him. “ I’ll get the Gray Friar to give you one of 
his dodgers.” 

“I have one; I asked for it. We are good 
friends now, Betsy. I like him tremendously. It 
was he who gave me the courage to go on with my 
work. But before that — I never told you about 
it, it was while you were ill and I was so unhappy 
— I came across a book one day in which there 
was something that exactly fitted me. I really 
think,” Louis spoke earnestly, “it was meant to 
come in my way. I had read just a paragraph 
when I was interrupted, and I didn’t even know 
the title or the author. Hyacinth carried it off, 
and I didn’t like to ask for it, so I did not discover 
till the other day that it was Professor Whitney’s 
book.” 

“The Gray Friar knows how to help people. 
I knew you would like him when you once were 
acquainted,” Elizabeth remarked, with a nod of 
satisfaction. 

“ It made me feel,” Louis went on, “ that when 
you have done something wrong — something for 
which another person suffers, you owe it to that 


256 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


person to be of some account, to make something 
of yourself, so that the suffering may not be all 
in vain. The person may not care, but that is 
your part — my part I ought to say.” 

Elizabeth looked thoughtful. “ If you mean 
me, Louis, I do care a great deal, and I know you 
are going to succeed. I wonder what would have 
happened if we hadn’t all come to Friendship last 
year ? ” 

“Well, Betsy, I am awfully glad our paths 
crossed, as you so often say. I don’t like to im- 
agine what would have happened if they had not. 
I don’t suppose I can ever make up to you 
for all I have made you suffer, but — ” 

“ Now, Louis, please — you promised you 
wouldn’t say such things.” 

“ I won’t then, only I do wish that sometime I 
might do something big for you, for I owe a lot 
to you. I shall not see you for a long while, 
probably. After this winter at the Art Institute 
I shall go to Paris; I think I can manage it, 
but I shall have to work tremendously. You 
must promise not to forget me, and perhaps 
some day our paths will cross again.” 

“ I shall not forget you, Louis,” Elizabeth said 


PATHS THAT CROSS 


257 


seriously, tying a piece of tough grass about her 
flowers. “ Did I tell you we are all to be 
together in Washington this winter.? Billy is 
there now. Mother and Juliet will come next 
month. I had my choice of staying with Aunt 
Myrah at Mountain Top, or coming here for two 
weeks, and I wanted to see everybody once more, 
so I came here.” 

“It does seem like a sort of general breaking- 
up, doesn’t it .? ” said Louis. “ Let’s go for a 
good-bye row on the river. Jack Barton lends 
me his boat while I am here. He left to-day.” 

So presently they were floating down the 
winding river, between banks fringed with wil- 
lows and wild oats. The sunshine sparkled in 
Elizabeth’s brown hair, and the wind loosened 
and curled it about her face, after a fashion of 
its own. She leaned forward and trailed her 
fingers in the clear water. “ It is such a beau- 
tiful world,” she said joyously. 

A short time after Elizabeth and Louis had 
passed on their way to the river. Miss Gilderoy 
stepped out of the shadow of the covered bridge 
into the sunny road. She had been to call at 
Dr. Milward’s, where there was no one at home. 


258 ON HYACINTH HILL 

She walked slowly, with a half smile on her 
lips, thinking of the changes that had come about 
in one brief year; for the sunshine, the soft air, 
the purple and gold of the meadows, reminded 
her of another September day, when she had 
travelled this same road with a weight of anxiety 
on her heart, not knowing what was before her. 

A voice at her elbow said, “Good afternoon,” 
and there was the Gray Friar. 

“As usual, you appear as if you had dropped 
from the skies,” she said, giving him her hand. 

“ I was conversing with Tommy Bent, who is 
fishing on the bank, when I saw you. You were 
looking very thoughtful; I almost feared to 
interrupt.” 

“Like the walrus, I was thinking of many 
things,” Hyacinth replied, smiling. 

“ ‘ Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, 

Of cabbages and kings,’ ” 

he finished the quotation. 

“Tell me about the school, how is it doing.?” 
Hyacinth asked. 

“ It has opened well. Our present quarters 
are rather restricted, but I hope by the first of 
the year the new building will be ready.” 


PATHS THAT CROSS 


259 


They walked on as far as the stile, talking of 
the school and matters connected with it. As 
they paused there, Hyacinth said, “ Won’t you 
come up to the house with me and have a cup 
of tea ? Or perhaps you will have an apple ? ” 
she added gayly. “ It may be your last chance 
to enjoy my hospitality for a while. I think it 
will be better for Louis to be in the city this 
winter, so I shall probably rent Hyacinth Hill. 
I have had an offer.” 

The Gray Friar looked at her gravely. 
“ Would you consider another ? ” he asked. 

Oh, yes,” Hyacinth answered, laughing, “ I 
shall make the best bargain I can.” Then 
something in her companion’s eyes caused her 
to stoop suddenly to pick up a branch of 
golden-rod dropped by Betsy. 

There was a sound of wheels coming down 
hill. ** There is Mrs. Barton,” she exclaimed. 
“ What a coincidence ! Come,” she added, 
hastily mounting the stile — that is, if you care 
for tea,” looking over her shoulder with a 
world of mischief, and something more, in her 
eyes. 

To judge by the promptness with which he 


26 o 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


followed, the Gray Friar was extremely fond of 
tea. They were more than halfway across the 
meadow before the driver of the bay horse came 
within sight of them. 

In the soft, half light of the wood path they 
slackened their pace. “ Hyacinth, you under- 
stand, don’t you ” The Gray Friar bent his 
head to see her face. “ I haven’t much to 
offer — I am not rich; but whatever I have or 
am is yours for the taking.” 

Hyacinth lifted her eyes; they were full of a 
sweet earnestness. “ I don’t care for riches, but 
I should like to help you, Martin.” 

If the longest way round is sometimes the 
shortest way home, it must follow that at others 
the shortest way is the longest. Hyacinth and 
the Gray Friar might have followed the road 
to the front gate of Hyacinth Hill twice over in 
the time it took them to reach it by the wood 
path. 

“ There is just one objection I have to this 
arrangement,” she was saying with mischievous 
gravity, as they lingered on the edge of the 
lawn, — “it is so obviously fitting and suitable.” 

“ I don’t mind that at all,” the Gray Friar 


PATHS THAT CROSS 


261 


replied cheerfully, “ especially when I think of 
the years spent in hoping against hope.” 

“ And I didn’t know,” Hyacinth said softly. 
“ Never mind, it shall all be made up to you,” 
she added. 

Miss Unadilla and Dr. Milward were at this 
moment crossing the lawn. Hyacinth advanced 
to meet them with a little more color in her 
face than usual. 

“ You must come back and have some tea,” she 
said. 

But Miss Una declined. “No, my dear, thank 
you ; it is growing late. We have been enjoy- 
ing your porch for half an hour. I rather ex- 
pected to find Elizabeth here.” 

“Louis carried her off for a row; I met them,” 
said the Gray Friar. 

“ And I went to call on you,” Hyacinth added. 

“Well, Unadilla,” said her cousin as they 
walked home, “ I suppose you are satisfied ? ” 

“Yes, it is just as it should be.” Miss Una 
sighed happily. 

“ Hyacinth will find the opportunity for useful- 
ness she thought she had missed,” Dr. Milward 
went on. “Do you mind growing old, Una, 


262 


ON HYACINTH HILL 


when you see happiness like this ? Does it 
make you think regretfully of what has been 
denied you, or what you may have lost ? ” 

“ Perhaps a little, but I don’t often think about 
it. There is always something left,” and she 
smiled as she added, “If only the belief that 
we’ll find our own in the end.” 

“ ‘ For He hath prepared for them a city,’ ” 
Dr. Milward repeated, half to himself. 



THE LITTLE QUEEN 

By Eva Madden 

240 pp. Illustrated, Cloth^ $1.00 


About the little seven-year-old French wife of Richard II. 
the writer has woven one of the sweetest and happiest stories 
of its kind, presented in a peculiarly pleasing and interesting 
style . — Boston Herald. 

This is a very entertaining story, with a web of English and 
French history so carefully woven with a fictional background 
that the history is indelibly impressed on our minds before 
we are conscious that we have learned it . — Daily News, 

A winsome and royal child is the “ Little Queen” whose 
history is told in this story, embroidered, like some rich arras, 
■with courtiers, and fair ladies, and pageants, and knights, and 
knightly deeds. Nor is the tale too long, but told with an 
art which never suffers it to become tedious, nor allows the 
interest to wane . — Milwaukee ''•Free Press. 

This story is the brief, sad life of the child-wife of Richard II. 
of England and will do much toward awakening interest in and 
impressing on the minds of young people the troublous times 
in which this little French maid’s lot was cast, and in which 
she so faithfully and fearlessly took her part. — The Record. 

Miss Madden tells the pathetic story of this little French 
princess most charmingly, and, while she does not confine 
herself exclusively to history, historical facts form the foun- 
dation on which the attractive story is built. It is thoroughly 
interesting, and will please little people, as well as boys and 
girls of older years. — Herald, 










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